


The Tale of the Soldier

by Guede



Series: The Book of the Green Field [3]
Category: Football RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Dom/sub Undertones, Graphic descriptions of corpses and battlefields, Heavy Angst, Implied supernatural shenanigans, M/M, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-20
Updated: 2015-08-20
Packaged: 2018-04-16 07:23:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 47,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4616442
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A former priest, Luís Figo is struggling with his faith when his dangerous mission takes an unexpected turn.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tale of the Soldier

**Author's Note:**

> Set in an Alternate World Romania loosely based on the year 1476.

Not much of the man could be made out under all the mud and gore. He was tall for the region and seemed well-built, which at first made Luís think he was a Saxon, but then he stumbled against a bush and the lead wolf leaped on him. Mud and stones sprayed up, then fell to reveal that the man had somehow twisted off the bush and forced the wolf back. The beast crashed down on its side, but then rolled onto its feet and shook itself off, snarling—and the man was snarling back, the whites of his eyes and the white of his teeth the most visible aspects of him. His sleeve had been torn off almost to the shoulder, revealing both that the wolf had freshly bloodied his arm and that he carried at least two tattoos. So he couldn’t possibly be a Saxon, since in Wallachia they were all merchants and townsfolk, conservative creatures who wouldn’t have ventured this far off the known trade routes anyway.

Another wolf made a short lunge, just short of the man’s knee, before ducking under the wild swing of his sword. The backswing forced him onto his trailing foot and into the brush so the man nearly fell; his head went down and the wolves eagerly surged forward. But then he jerked himself into an agonized half-crouch, gnashing his teeth so viciously that even those audacious beasts hesitated.

It was a brave effort, but he wouldn’t last much longer. His legs were trembling even though he was kneeling now, and though his weapon was a very vicious-looking broadsword, he obviously couldn’t wield it to any effect. And of course there were the numbers, one man to five fully-grown wolves, and then another two half-grown ones lurking on the outskirts.

Luís was on a slight outcropping, looking down on the scene, which was taking place in a cramped, steep-sided crack in the rocky ground, barely big enough to hold the man and the wolves and with only one entryway. For the moment Luís had the advantage of higher ground, but unfortunately he didn’t have a bow and arrow, or any other weapon that would actually make that an effective advantage. Then again, that might be for the best, since he’d only recently taken up archery and his aim still wasn’t trustworthy. He was better with the sword that was strapped to his back, but he still wouldn’t consider himself anything more than a decent fighter…on the defensive.

Down in the ravine, the wolves’ growling suddenly escalated in pitch, making Luís look up sharply. He caught the shifting in one beast’s haunches and as there was no more time for careful consideration of the situation, he simply did what came to mind: he scooped up the nearest rock and hurled it.

His boyhood aim had fortunately stayed with him, and he scored a direct hit on the wolf’s foreleg as it rose into the air. The animal fell back, whimpering, then flopped out of sight as its fellows and the man twisted about in surprise to look at Luís. Come to think of it, he did at least have a long scarf, and when he’d been a boy in the monastery, he’d been quite good with a slingshot, fending off the birds from the orchards. He quickly unwrapped his scarf, looped it in one hand, and then cradled another stone in the loop as the lead wolf took a few steps towards him, clearly measuring up the leap.

This one was either extraordinarily nimble, or Luís had slowed a good deal since his childhood, because the wolf managed to dodge the rock. But it was a close call, and afterward the beast was patently more nervous, eyeing in turns the divot the rock had driven out of the turf and Luís. It paced about, then circled back to the wounded wolf, who’d managed to rise again but who now held its foreleg tucked up tightly against itself. Then it looked at the man, who’d sunk back in exhaustion, but who snarled again when he saw the wolf was paying attention to him.

It truly seemed to be thinking, almost like a man itself. Rather uncanny, Luís thought. He glanced at the rock he’d been about to pick up, then back at the wolves as they shuffled about again, their claws clicking on the pebble-strewn earth. Then he did pick up the rock, but slowly. “I didn’t really want to kill anything today,” he muttered to himself. “It’s been bad enough already without that.”

The lead wolf abruptly turned to stare at Luís, its ears pricked high as if it’d not only heard but comprehended him. It took a step forward, he dropped the rock into the loop of his scarf, and almost immediately it leaped back. After another glance at the man, it barked and then turned in the same moment. The wolf loped out of the ravine, its fellows following with the wounded one in the center—easy to pick out, with its odd gait—and in a few minutes they’d vanished into the woods.

Still, Luís waited a few more uneasy minutes before he dared climb down. The encounter had been peculiar all around, and even though he was sure that no other man or wolf was now nearby, the hairs on the back of his neck were still prickling. When he was down in the ravine and on a solid footing, he took the time to unstrap his sword from his back as well.

The man had been struggling to stand up since the wolves had left, but now he slumped back to the ground, only held upright by his desperate hold on his sword. Even so, he swayed and shivered and seemed in genuine danger of falling on the sharp edge and injuring himself even further. His eyes followed Luís about with an intensity that bordered on insane—incipient fever, more likely.

“I don’t mean any harm,” Luís ventured in Romanian. He’d been in the region long enough to have gained some fluency in the language, but it still felt awkward on his tongue. And judging by the expressions on the natives’ faces—including this one—he didn’t sound any more comfortable in the language than he felt. “I’m a travelling pilgrim. I…my horse threw me, a little way back, and I heard the wolves. I am not a thief.”

That last statement had been one of the first phrases he’d learned, and consequently Luís thought he said it better than the rest, but it was that phrase that brought a brief, slight smile to the man’s face. Then the man hitched himself up on his sword, trying to use it as a crutch, and began to say something, but the sword-tip abruptly tore out of the ground and he went down in a scatter of stones and a flurry of pained curses. The sword fell from him, tumbled a few feet and then came to rest with the tip pointed towards Luís. Its loud clatter made the man wince, his knees jerking up towards his belly, but then he seemed to go limp, with one arm flopping out so his fingers hit, then caught in some brush that held his hand a few inches above the ground. His breathing sped up sharply, then suddenly died away. He was motionless.

After a moment, Luís sheathed his sword and hurriedly came forward, stepping over the other blade. He began to roll up his sleeves as he did, trying to remember that spell of doctoring he’d done in Germany, and stumbled as he wasn’t paying sufficient attention to the rough ground.

His lack of care saved him. The man’s sudden lunge took Luís only on one shin instead of high up on the thighs, so Luís was knocked down to one knee but no further. His breath hissed from him and he reflexively drove down with his elbows, catching the other man in the shoulder and on the ribs. Something scraped off the side of his leg and Luís twisted sharply, sending his knee up into the man’s chin as well. He saw the wildness in the man’s eyes as the man’s head snapped back from the blow, and so he quickly followed up with a punch to the temple.

The man dropped again, limp as an empty sack, but Luís still wasted no time in pulling himself free and then scrambling back. As he did, his heel hit something, and then a dagger bounced out from under the other man. Luís snatched it up and didn’t cease moving till he was well outside of lunging distance.

He started to stand, but then changed his mind and crouched back down, trying to catch his breath. His ribs were hurting a little from the unexpected effort, but that soon passed, and when he examined himself, he found no more than a long score across his trousers. Fortunately they were of thick leather, to stand up to the riding and the mountains’ harsh weather. Not particularly fine leather either, so Luís’ vanity wasn’t harmed.

It still took some time for Luís to calm himself, for he was…more angry than frightened, he finally decided. And that was not good for his eventual salvation, since fear was understandable but his anger now was more than a sin—it was downright _petty_. Perhaps the other man had been afraid as well, and that had been why he hadn’t simply trusted Luís at his word. After all, he was out here alone, lacking a horse or…or any real baggage, or even any decent clothing, Luís belatedly realized. All the man had on was boots, trousers in the peasant style, and the remains of a thin woolen shirt, which were hardly sufficient for the advanced autumn cold.

“God forgive me for my temper,” Luís finally muttered, and crossed himself. He rubbed his hands together, considering the matter a little longer, then cautiously went forward again. Of course he needed to apologize for more than that, but he hoped that God would understand the delay, as it was for a benevolent enough reason. The man was still breathing, but his arm was bleeding heavily and he urgently needed attention.

* * *

Luís’ horse had thrown him upon hearing the wolf-howls, but he’d managed to seize the reins before it had run off and had forced the beast to stay. But it had been too excited to remount, so he’d tied it to a tree and then gone looking. By the time he managed to drag the other man back to it, it had calmed down, but its nostrils flared the instant it had a whiff of them. It whinnied sharply, then yanked about its head so violently that Luís stopped where he was.

“Blooded war-horse,” he snorted. And he’d thought he’d learned a bit about haggling from his time in Milan. Clearly the merchants here had bettered him.

But that was a minor concern, considering the whole situation. It was growing dark and they were nowhere near any town, and though Luís had bound up the man’s wounds, they desperately needed more thorough tending. He chewed on his lip, studying the surrounding terrain with a nasty gnawing sense of desperation in his gut, and then forced himself to settle on one of the many outcroppings in the area. There was no point in brooding: if he was having a horrible time, then he was having a horrible time. Doubtless it was all part of God’s intentions for him.

Grimacing, Luís shrugged away that trace of sarcasm and set to work. The mountains were at least full of caves of all sizes, so it took him no time at all to find one that suited his needs. He left the man and the horse there, then gathered enough firewood to last them through the night. He also took the man’s sword, since it was far heavier than his own, and chopped down several bushes, which he dragged back and forced into the ground just before the cave-mouth to form a makeshift barrier. It would hardly keep out an invasion, but he was hoping that the appearance of an obstacle plus the fire would put off any wolves that still remained in the area.

While he was acting the woodsman, he came across a freshet and took the time to thoroughly scrub himself and his clothing of all traces of blood. Then he went back to the cave, congratulating himself for thinking of that detail, and got the kettle. He also took the hide waterskins that that one merchant had talked him into buying, and who now seemed considerably more kindhearted than Luís had been thinking for the past few days. They’d been dead weight for days but now they were a boon in reducing the number of trips he’d have to make between the cave and the stream. At least, he hoped they would be. He was no doctor, after all.

In the end, he had to fill them a second time, and then he told himself he would have to make the water stretch because dark was falling and he wasn’t about to walk that far again on his own. He also stopped rinsing off the other man to build up the fire a bit. He did have enough wood, and he needed the light.

Luís still had his back turned when he heard the snap and then the pained grunt. His hand shot down to the dagger in his boot. He listened closely, and when he heard nothing but creaking and rustling, he threw that last stick on the fire and slowly twisted about on his toes, keeping his hand over the dagger-hilt.

The man stared back at him. The flames jumped, then sank behind Luís, their uneven light barely reaching the thick stringy hair that barred the man’s face, let alone penetrating the darkness of his eyes. Though then the man ducked his head, and some trick momentarily made his eyes flash an eerie green.

He dropped his head, then let his arms come to rest on the ground so he was lying on his side again. After another glance at Luís, he looked at the rope binding his wrists together, his gaze running from his hands down the foot of slack to the iron spike that anchored the other end. It’d left Luís sweating, and with a slivered palm, to drive that into the stony ground with his sword-hilt as a hammer, but now he had a feeling that that had been worth the effort. Though frankly, with what the man had been through, he shouldn’t even have been able to lift his head.

“I was seeing to those gashes on your leg,” Luís offered after a moment. He absently fingered the dagger and the man’s eyes shot to it so Luís almost jerked away his hand, feeling oddly ashamed. But his commonsense held that at bay, and he remained where he was. “Those and your arm are…they will heal, but scarred. I think.”

The man flicked his gaze back to Luís’ face. He was very still as he listened, his eyes opaque and unreadable, but occasionally the muscles of his throat would ripple with a hard swallow. The night chill was already falling, but sweat was dripping off his brow and he was naked, as Luís had had to cut off his clothes to get at his wounds.

Speaking of which, that probably was leading to all sorts of terrible conclusions in the man’s mind. Luís suppressed a grimace at himself for forgetting and awkwardly gestured towards the small pile of baggage. “I can lend you something after I’m done. I kept your boots, but had to burn your clothes because of the blood. The wolves would smell it.”

“They would,” the man said abruptly. His voice was low and thinned out by a rasp, but it had a depth that hinted at a more melodic natural tone. He blinked, and Luís abruptly realized the man had been staring the entire time. “You know much about Romanian wolves?”

Luís took his hand off the dagger, letting the man see that. His feet were beginning to ache and he gingerly settled so his soles were flat against the ground, then shifted so that he was resting on one knee. “I’m from Portugal.”

“No…then.” They were almost two separate statements, the man paused for so long between them. His brows arched, then sank, and then he made a little, almost careless movement of the head. “A pilgrim? To what, hell?”

“Ah…no. At least, that would be what I hope to avoid. Salvation tends to be the point of a pilgrimage,” Luís eventually said, rather thrown by the strangeness of the question. He glanced down and found his hands betraying his state in how they were picking at the scratch over his trousers. After pulling them away, he pushed himself up and moved forward and to the side, angling for the kettle and the rags he’d left besides the other man. “I’m not done with your leg.”

A flicker of a smile pulled at the man’s lips, and then he rolled his shoulder, the motion running down his body in a…questionable way. His eyes half-closed. “I can feel that.”

“I know some doctoring. Haven’t killed anyone that way.” Luís finally reached the rags. He picked one up, then dipped it into the kettle. The water there was still quite warm—it didn’t have to be at this point, since Luís had already managed to wipe off all the dried blood, but Luís appreciated the small comfort. Strictly speaking, he shouldn’t but he was still in a state of sin and he reasoned that such a slight increase would make no difference in the end.

“Well, you’re not Romanian. Romanian doctors are shit,” the man said, speaking slowly but clearly. His eyes closed further, but he shifted his head to watch as Luís slid over to him. “Your Romanian is shit, too.”

Luís bit at his lip and was not sure in the least whether that was truly out of annoyance. His throat was trying to vibrate, as if he found it amusing, but he wouldn’t have described his mood in such terms. “As I said, I’m from—”

A stick in the fire suddenly snapped and Luís jerked at that, sliding off his knees, and once again he was serendipitously saved by his own discomfort. The man’s pincer attempt, his legs swinging up to drive Luís against his arms, failed; his knees slammed into Luís’ left shin, and then Luís managed to twist enough to fall over the other man. He grabbed for a shoulder and ended up with a bicep in his hand, and beneath him a snarling, writhing fury. A foot thumped off his right leg, and then a grazing blow skittered off his arm as he tried to pin the other man.

Something grated and Luís panicked, thinking that the spike was coming loose. An image of that long point flying about his head flashed through his mind and he clutched tight whatever he had, then yanked the other man up and slammed him back down. Luís heard a clicking and had not the slightest idea what it was, but he thought the worst and threw himself down as hard as he could, driving his feet into the ground to get some sort of leverage. His head went down as well, his chin sliding along flesh before suddenly finding itself in thin air. Having no support, it simply dropped further. At the same time, the other man thrashed so his head rose, and Luís’ face was thus trapped in the crook of the man’s neck.

His mouth was open because he was gasping and the man’s flesh simply jammed up into his teeth. It all happened far too quickly for him to truly see what was going on, much less understand or plan for it, and so he was as surprised as the other man at the inadvertent bite. He thoughtlessly loosened his grip and the man wrenched about, throat ramming up into Luís’ top teeth so pain exploded in the roof of his mouth and the world filled with black spots. Disoriented, Luís tried to jerk away his head, but it was already bent back as far as he could go, and the strain—he slammed his head down, trying anything to relieve the strain, and the man bucked viciously.

Luís’ teeth sank into flesh made rigid by tension, and so deeply and suddenly that the force of it painfully jolted his jaw, almost making him believe that the hinge had dislocated. He coughed, then attempted to suck in a breath, but only managed to pull more flesh into his mouth. It tasted of dirt and salt and something else, some bitter oil that had been smeared on the man’s skin and that made Luís gag. His head went up, and then his teeth slipped and lost their purchase on the man’s neck so he slipped forward a few finger-widths before catching himself.

In balancing himself, Luís flexed his hands and the man beneath him suddenly gasped. It was a startling, jagged sound that cut through the low crackling of the fire.

Luís wrenched back his head. His hands slipped and he gouged down with his fingers, then thought he saw a dark blur come towards him. He wrenched himself off the other man, rolling till the wall of the cave stopped him by virtue of bruising his shins. The impact drove one knee back into his chest, knocking the wind from him so he dropped over onto his back. There he laid for a good few seconds, staring blindly above him and trying to catch his breath.

Eventually he remembered that iron spike, and the moment he did, he jerked himself back over, sucking air in between his teeth. The dark outline of the cave-mouth blurred, then took an unusually long time to settle back into solidity; Luís shook his head twice before he felt steady enough to pull himself up onto his knees, and then to look up. Since he could do that, he belatedly realized, perhaps he didn’t need to concern himself with the spike.

Despite that, his gaze cautiously crossed the ground instead of simply going directly to its target. It traveled over deep ruts dug into the pebbles, a darkish smear that made Luís grimace…a bare calf, marked with slashes of dirt. Then higher, to the man’s eyes, and almost immediately Luís dropped his head to rub hard at the bridge of his nose. His ribs still hurt when he inhaled, and there was a tightness about his temples that hardly boded well either.

After a moment’s slow breathing, he looked up again. The other man was still watching him, and as far as Luís could tell, hadn’t changed position at all. Though he was trembling with the strain of holding still, as the spike had stayed planted and so he had to twist his head nearly completely around to face Luís. He was half-sitting, leaning on one arm with his legs curled up, and the left one angled slightly so the firelight touched on a fresh red trickle running down its underside.

“I was going to take care of that,” Luís finally said. He realized a moment later that that was hardly descriptive and pointed at the same spot on his own leg to explain better.

The man’s expression was completely opaque to Luís, skin drawn so tight with tension that no emotion could also pull at it. His back was to the fire so the light didn’t reach his eyes. “All right. It could use it.”

His tone wasn’t any more useful for elucidating his mood, flat and curt as it was. All Luís would venture to guess from it was that the man didn’t truly believe in what he was saying, nor like it much. “I don’t like being attacked either. So that was why…the rope.”

“Seems reasonable,” the man remarked after a long, uneasy moment. He almost glanced at his hands as he spoke, but instead shifted so he was closer to lying than to sitting. The trembling in his shoulders had increased greatly in the past few minutes.

Luís found himself running the heel of his hand over and over the top of his thigh. He made himself stop, then began to pull at his nose. After stopping that, he couldn’t help a sigh.

“You can come back over,” the man said, lifting his head a little. He loosely rolled one shoulder, but all appearances of nonchalance quickly vanished when he tried to move his legs. The grimace had barely flicked over his face when he abruptly lost strength and flopped over in a jumble of limbs. His head cracked against the ground rather roughly, if the sharp hiss was any indication, and then his back arched so deeply that Luís thought the man meant to break it.

He didn’t, but when he slumped back against the ground, the pallor of his face hinted that it had been a close thing. He shut his eyes tightly, his lips pulling back from his teeth so Luís could see how clenched those were, and breathed in and out very slowly and deeply several times.

The blood pooling under his leg was becoming quite substantial, and the more Luís sat by and did nothing about it, the more ill Luís felt. But on the other hand—and Luís hated it, but his pragmatic side was developing very quickly these days—Luís did not want to die here, tending to some stranger, his mission incomplete. And he knew well enough how detours were never as simple as they seemed.

“I…” Luís shifted onto his feet, then began to move across the space. He initially aimed for the man, but somehow he found himself sliding to the side. The rag he’d dropped was there, and he did need to retrieve it, but he knew himself well enough these days to find contempt in the change. “Your leg…”

“I’m not going to do it again,” the man muttered. The skin about his eyes pinched into starbursts of wrinkles, then smoothed as he let out a long, raspy breath. “I’m sorry. I’m—I’m Adrian.”

“Adrian?” Luís repeated. He fingered the rag, then shook at it when he noticed the dirt it’d collected. Then he began to slap it against his hip, only to shake his head at how ineffective that was and instead ball up the rag in his hand. “Adrian.”

The left side of Adrian’s mouth quirked slightly. “Yes?”

“I’ll be honest and say I’m not that much of a fighter. I’m a—I’m trained as a priest.” After another moment, Luís got up and took the two strides he needed in order to reach the kettle. He stayed well clear of the other man as he crouched down and rinsed out the rag. He knew how intently he was being watched, but ignored it in favor of picking over his scattered tools, retrieving the needle and then the thread. “If you do that again, I’ll have to knock you out, because I don’t know what else to do.”

“Fair enough.” Adrian rolled over onto his side, keeping his weight off his wounded arm. He curled up slightly as Luís moved towards him, but only from the waist up; his injured leg he held straight out. “I was wondering why you’d tell me such a thing.”

Luís heard the undertone of dry humor and relaxed enough to glance up at the other man’s face, only to be confronted with the fresh bruise on Adrian’s throat. He flinched and put his hand down, and then nearly flinched again when his fingers closed on flesh. After a hard shake, Luís simply picked up the rag and began to wipe at the gashes.

He looked up again when Adrian sucked in a breath, but the other man had put his head down, tucking it between his arms so they and the thick knots of the rope obscured his neck. Uncomforted, but a little less distracted, Luís went back to tending the man’s wounds. The cuts on the leg weren’t as deep as those on his arm and wouldn’t need stitches, but they were far dirtier and Luís had to spend some time working out the gravel and the bits of matted fur. After that first hiss, Adrian didn’t make another sound, but was as silent and still as a statue.

Once the wounds were clean, Luís wrapped them up in strips of clean linen. Then he made himself look over the man again, and was relieved to find that he’d done no worse than some bruising. At least on the body—he swallowed hard, then reached out and put his hand on Adrian’s shoulder.

Adrian immediately lifted his head, and Luís suffered such a sharp pang of guilt that his hands jerked down to the man’s arm instead, binding another linen strip over the stitches there. But then he had to look, in order to be thorough, and at the very least he owed the man that. So he took a deep breath and lifted his hand towards the man’s neck. “I need to—”

The words had barely left his mouth when Adrian’s nose and mouth pressed into his hand. Luís stared, his mouth still shaped about the next word, as Adrian pulled back his shoulders and arched his neck, bending it so the bitten place offered itself up to Luís. Something warm and wet flicked across the hollow of Luís’ palm, and Adrian was beginning to make a noise, the possible meaning of which Luís choked on as he jerked his hand away. His balance tipped and he teetered, then had to slap his hand against the ground to keep on his feet.

He breathed hard twice, and then normally after that, but that was the body only: his composure had hardly been so easily restored. He could still feel the spittle on his palm, now grinding into the grit of the cave floor, cold and sticky. But his own mouth was dry.

“I didn’t save you for such things,” he finally said. He looked at the point of Adrian’s shoulder.

It moved, the red-yellow light drawing fleeting bars across it. First back, and then up again, hunched like an animal against a winter wind. “So why?”

Luís licked his lips, but afterward they only seemed more chapped. He dropped his gaze, found it touched on the curve of the man’s stomach and then turned away. The rag in his hand went into the kettle, and then he firmly, quickly took hold of Adrian’s upper arm and gave the man’s neck a few wipes. Then he threw down the rag and got to his feet. “I don’t like seeing people die. I’m a priest.”

He went over to his things and got out a shirt and a pair of trousers, then was heading back over when a wolf howl abruptly invaded the cave. Right on its heels came the whinny and stamping feet of his horse, about which Luís had forgotten. The damn beast tried to rear as Luís turned, then slammed its forefeet back down so hard that chips of rock flew from its hooves. It threw up its head as Luís took a wary step towards it, but then seemed to settle.

Thankful that he needn’t deal with a maddened stallion as well, Luís turned back to Adrian and found the man sitting up and looking intently out of the cave. But then Adrian glanced at Luís, lowering his bound hands to rest on his knee. His eyes went to the clothes in Luís’ hand, and then he pursed his lips as if to speak.

Before he could, Luís turned and went back to the fire, where he’d left his sword. The flames had nearly consumed all the wood and had fallen to a low red glow, so Luís spent a moment rebuilding the fire. Then he half-rose, but as he did an ember skittered from the fire nearly to his boot. He used his sword to prod it back into the flames, then finally took hold of himself and went back over to the other man.

Adrian caught the clothes Luís tossed him in the crook of his elbows, then started to pull his arms towards him. When Luís slipped the sword between his wrists, he immediately stilled save for his brows, which flew up nearly to his hairline. They were as finely arched as any noblewoman’s, Luís absently noted.

After another moment’s reluctance, Luís squatted down. He was careful to rotate the sword as he did so its tip pointed towards but did not touch the other man’s chest, though to be honest, that was a fairly empty threat. At such an angle, with his inexperience, he wasn’t likely to inflict more than a scratch should the other man spring at him. But he was hoping that the mere appearance of expertise would help.

It seemed to have some effect, since Adrian was motionless as Luís undid the knots, suppressing one or two blasphemous curses as his broad fingers slipped on the rough rope, and then pulled the loops from the man’s wrists. The uncovered skin was very pink and raw-looking, but miraculously, it seemed unbroken.

“Go ahead,” Luís said, flipping the last few inches of the rope away. He caught that loose end as he backed up a few awkward paces, then got up enough so that he could in fact walk. As he did, he half-turned, intending to get to starting dinner, but then stopped.

When he looked back, Adrian already had his arms through the sleeves, but the quirk of his mouth still matched the laugh echoing about them. The other man gazed at the cloth bunched between his hands, then shook his head and threw the shirt over his head with an abrupt but graceful movement. “You’re what again? Portuguese? And one of those—”

“Yes, I look to Rome.” Luís both sighed and tightened his grip on the sword. He became strangely absorbed in a particular greenish-gray pebble near his right foot, then regained his senses and set about seeing what he had left in the way of foodstuffs. “But I’m on pilgrimage. I’m not here to make converts, or argue with anyone about the God we meet when we die. I’m only passing through—”

“I can see that,” Adrian said, and laughed again, low and raspy. The sound trailed into a racking cough, harsh enough to make Luís glance back. Then away, and Adrian didn’t laugh at that, but his eyes were still glinting in amusement as Luís’ gaze jumped to them. “Well, you already saw this, didn’t you?”

A cold breeze swept into the cave, making the hairs on Luís’ neck and arms stiffen just as the heat flushed his cheeks. He opened his mouth, then started to lift his hand to the dull throb in his temple. Fortunately, he remembered that that was his sword-hand in time to avoid any more embarrassment. “I apologize for that.”

“It’s fine. I don’t know how else you were going to get to my—oh.” Adrian paused, up on one knee, his injured arm tucked into his chest as he balanced precariously on the fingertips of the other. He looked at Luís for a long moment, the lightness fading from his eyes, and then he looked at the sword Luís had swung back to point at him. His lips thinned slightly, and then he cocked his head, lifting his eyes back to Luís’ face. “I’m sorry about that. I didn’t know—I didn’t know if you’d be any better.”

“I could understand that for the first time, but the second time is a little harder for me.” Luís dipped his sword, watching Adrian dress, and then crouched down to pick up the loose end of the rope when Adrian made a minute forward movement. He pulled the rest of the rope towards him, then twisted a loop of it around his hand, keeping the sword level between them. “I do mean well, and I’ve got no interest here beyond serving God by not ignoring the hurt and outcast. But I—I have my own business to attend to as well, and I don’t want to die here.”

In his head it’d sounded a good deal more sensible and a good deal less nervous, but the words were out and Luís had to stand by them. Or squat with them, as it was, and in order to avoid succumbing to his self-disgust, he concentrated on holding up the sword so that the strain of its weight wouldn’t be too apparent.

Adrian listened, and it seemed carefully, but that peculiar blankness had crept into his expression again. Of course, he was facing the fire now, but somehow the light still didn’t seem to reach his eyes. And then he shrugged a shoulder, and quickly bobbed his head in a sort of acknowledgment, and when he lifted it again, the reddish light touched upon a weary, aged sort of resignation in his eyes. “All right,” he said, and held out his hands.

Luís took care of that as quickly as he could, trying not to tighten the cords over the same spots as he had before. When he was done, he began to offer another apology but quickly realized the hypocrisy of that and simply went to prepare dinner.

It wasn’t much, just some hard bread he softened in water, and then strips of dried meat that he boiled till they resembled edible. He split them into two portions, then gave Adrian the larger one along with a cup of water, which the other man took up first and guzzled down so greedily that Luís cursed himself for his thoughtlessness. When Adrian was done, Luís moved over to refill the cup.

“You know, I wouldn’t want to die here either,” Adrian abruptly said. He exhaled rather roughly as Luís, startled, spilled a little water over his hands. But as Luís looked up, Adrian merely sank back, keeping his head lower than Luís’ as he sat down. He drank half of the cup, then put it down and picked up one of the meat strips. “But really, you’re fine now. I won’t do that again.”

“I’d like to believe you, but—well, it’s not you either. I’ve—”

Adrian was laughing again, shaking his head. He rocked a little too far over and abruptly jerked back, hissing; his hands dropped to press over his injured leg. But then he snorted, and flicked a wry look up to Luís. “How long have you been in this country?”

“Well, I’ve learned the language,” Luís finally said. He topped up Adrian’s cup again, and then moved rather quickly back to his own share. An odd uneasiness clung to the other man, keeping Luís’ nerves tensed though the night now seemed quiet, with even the horse settled into an apparent doze.

It made him want to pray, he abruptly thought, and then he pushed that away before it could develop into anything like a memory.

“I won’t hurt you.” Adrian had straightened up as much as he could, pulling against the rope so that a sliver of abraded skin showed beneath its loops. He stared straight at Luís, strangely solemn, the firelight reaching his eyes and then going deeper, so deep that Luís found himself looking at the man’s nose instead as a precaution. “I won’t. I—I’ll help.”

“A thank-you is fine. I get my rewards from God,” Luís said. And as always since he’d left Milan, the words were heavy yet hollow on his tongue, devoid of any comfort. But he was used to saying them now, and what troubles he had with them didn’t interfere with his use of them. They should have, but he supposed that that was due to his state of sin. “You should eat. I know enough doctoring to sew you up, but I don’t know enough to keep you from fever.”

“I noticed,” Adrian said. His lips pressed together, then briefly allowed a slight smile to shape them. He finally settled back and began to eat, and then shrugged when he realized that Luís was still staring. “No, I’m fine today. Tomorrow…well, there are things that can be done. I can show you as we…where are you going?”

Luís had been in the middle of gnawing off a chunk of meat when the man asked. He paused, then resumed chewing, and after a good bit of effort, managed to get the food into his stomach. “Wherever the nearest town is, at the moment.”

“That’ll be a while.” The rope rasped against the spike as Adrian moved about. “Maybe six, seven hours away…I passed a farmhouse. It’s abandoned, but it would be a good place to spend the night.”

“With no host?” Luís asked, looking over his shoulder.

Adrian met his gaze, then moved one shoulder in a diffident gesture. “Some places here, it’s better if you have no host. Anyway, it hasn’t been abandoned that long.”

At that Luís gave the man a sharp look, but Adrian had already dropped his head and was eating again, slow but steady. He moved with careful but easy movements—so easy, in fact, that Luís had to doubt the man’s assessment of his own condition. But Luís did have to admit that if Adrian had meant something by implication there, he wasn’t about to yield its clear meaning up to intimidation. And likely he wasn’t, for this was a war-torn country and armies frequently took out their wrath on the countryside as well as on each other. It had been a continual shock to Luís, so used to the bloodless chess of Italian warfare, to see the carnage of their wake.

“You want me to show you?” Adrian looked up through his stringy hair. His shoulders were set slightly back, but his eyes were glinting again. Nervous and eager, and yet some sort of strain tainted the whole expression.

“I’ll take a look,” Luís said after another moment. In truth, he could’ve answered immediately save for his desire to keep as much from the other man as he could. He’d been lost for nearly two days now, and when the wolves had howled, he’d been digging himself ever deeper into his troubles by railing at God for that latest misfortune.

He’d leave it till the morning to decide if his luck had turned, he decided.

* * *

Adrian began to bend over, but then stopped to look at Luís. “May I?”

“Pardon?” Luís said, blinking. Then he understood and hid his annoyance at himself by undoing the end of the rope from the saddle horn. He held onto it for a moment, looking at the horse’s side, before hesitantly stroking his hand up the horse’s neck. For once the skittish thing took it at face value and bowed its head, allowing Luís to get the rope over it.

Then it started to nip at the grass, which Luís supposed was better than trying to kick Adrian every time the man let the rope slacken the least bit. Of course Luís still kept a good grip on the reins as he came around to see what Adrian wanted.

As the slack had permitted it, Adrian had gotten down onto his knees to poke at something in the ground. He glanced up once as Luís came to just behind his left shoulder, then resumed digging with his fingers at what appeared to be some kind of tuber. Occasionally he’d stop to take hold of the leafy top and attempt to rip it free, but it was proving stubborn.

Luís considered the matter, but he couldn’t help the other man without releasing either the reins or the rope, and neither of those was a practical possibility. And while he was standing, Adrian suddenly rocked backward with a curt grunt of triumph, the root finally coming free in a small explosion of dirt clods and pebbles. The other man slapped the plant against his thigh a few times to rid it of the extra soil, then handed it to Luís, who took out without much thought. Then Luís frowned and opened his mouth, only to find Adrian returning to his business on the ground as a pungent, bitter odor suddenly made Luís sneeze.

He jerked his head down and to the side, then deliberately blew out his nose a second time since his hands weren’t free to wipe at it. Then he straightened up, blinking a little, and found Adrian wrenched up onto his knees by the rope, another plant dangling from his hands. A sharp pang of guilt went through Luís and he breathed in, his apology forming in his head. And then he sneezed again, and had to stagger forward as his attempt to avoid doing so on Adrian tipped his balance too far. He jammed his heel into the ground and something hit him in the chest. Then it began to push and he jerked backwards.

Adrian was yanked onto one foot, but then held his ground, tight-lipped and grey-faced, as Luís scrambled back to a steady footing and hastily loosened the rope so it wasn’t wrenching about the other man. He swore under his breath, then muttered a prayer to counteract that slip. Then he sighed. “I’m—”

“I can’t run. If I run then the wolves have me again,” Adrian said. He spoke very calmly, though the color still hadn’t completely returned to his face and he’d immediately pulled in his injured arm, pressing it against his belly. “And you have my sword.”

“—sorry,” Luís finished. He fingered the rope for a moment longer, forcing himself to think through the surge of fear-tinged worry that had risen at the other man’s suggestion, and then pried his hand off. He couldn’t help leaping back a little as the end of the rope dropped, and then rubbed hard at his cheek, till the heat there felt as if it was coming from that rubbing. “I suppose I would be the only source of supplies, too.”

Adrian blinked, then peered up at Luís, his eyes a little more slitted than they’d have to be, given the overcast sky. Then he snorted and looked down, beginning to strip the plant in his hands of its leaves. That sharp smell rose again, then strengthened as Adrian cut open the stem with a thumbnail. “Are you sure you’re a priest?”

“I—no. I was. I’m—I’ve lost my priesthood,” Luís said too quickly. Too thoughtlessly, and thus too honestly, even for him as he was now. He grimaced, then raised his head as the reins went tense in his hand. The horse was suddenly restless, stamping its feet and baring its teeth, and Luís moved to try and soothe it before it could go plunging off into the mountains.

“Because you don’t think much like one.” But then Adrian shrugged and bent his head, apparently content to leave it at a mere observation. He twisted about and rubbed the split stem behind his right ear, then did the same to the other side. Then he tossed the plant away and put his hands down to rise. “That’s for the horse. I shouldn’t bother it so much n—”

He stumbled or caught something in the tangled weeds, and then he must have wrenched his injured leg so that he couldn’t recover in time. Adrian cursed and threw out his arms, trying to break his fall, but his weight came down on his hurt one and that instantly buckled, so instead he crumpled to the ground. His head thudded heavily against the toe of Luís’ right boot before Luís could do more than bend halfway down.

Though even if Luís had been a little quicker, he doubted he would’ve been able to do much good, with his hands as full as they were. He wasted a few minutes foolishly dithering over that before he finally tucked the tuber under one arm and then knelt down. “Adrian? Are you—”

Luís’ tongue seemed to stick to the roof of his mouth. His breath tried to force its way by that, but failed and so he choked on his gasp, and then that was the last movement he was able to make, with the shock having turned his body to stone.

“I can’t do anything,” Adrian murmured after a moment, his breath tickling warmly over the side of Luís’ neck. He moved his head a little, letting a few strands of hair slip to graze the line of Luís’ jaw, and then pushed himself back. The effort seemed to pain him and he grunted heavily, then simply let himself fall back onto his heels when his balance had sufficiently tipped in that direction. He winced and grabbed his thigh with his good hand, his other arm tucked as close to his stomach as his bonds would allow, and then lifted a look of wry resignation to Luís. “All right?”

“I’d have an easier time believing you if you stopped doing that. Surprising me.” After a deep breath, Luís willed his limbs into flesh again. He thought a moment, then deliberately dropped Adrian’s rope and took the tuber out from under his arm. Then he stood up to store it in one of the saddlebags before turning about to offer a hand.

Already halfway to his feet, Adrian didn’t immediately notice the gesture, and when he did, he looked curiously at it, as if he wasn’t quite certain what it was. His eyes went up to Luís’ face, and then he took it just as Luís had been withdrawing it. Another grimace of pain crossed his face as Luís released him and he settled back on his heels. “Would it help if I tried apologizing for the bad first impression again?”

“I don’t think so. But that’s not your…” Luís stopped, frowning. Then he reached out again and put his hand to the side of Adrian’s neck. He hadn’t been precisely thinking, and so he nearly let go when Adrian’s head came up sharply, but he prevented himself in time and merely made it a quick touch. Then he did the same to Adrian’s forehead, but more slowly so the other man could know what he was doing. “You’re warming.”

“I think another hour,” Adrian said, relaxing a little. He took a wavering step towards Luís, then barely saved himself from that stumble, and there was no rock or uneven place beneath his feet that Luís could see. Adrian muttered under his breath, then sighed and rubbed at his chin. “That root—you make a paste from it, then cut out those stitches and put it on. Should help with that.”

Folk medicine, then. Of course, in Luís’ experience the expensive doctors with their university degrees were hardly a guaranteed improvement, but since all medicine was of dubious provenance, that was neither an endorsement nor a complete condemnation. But the treatment itself wasn’t what troubled Luís the most: possibly the root would do as Adrian said, and then possibly it wouldn’t, and Luís would be responsible either way. He knew little of any medicine, but he did know what he’d seen before, on battlefields and in plague-ridden cities, and fever after a wound was often fatal no matter what was done. It was a matter more up to God than anything else.

“You don’t believe me, you can do that. And you can bury me afterward, all right?” Adrian shuffled a little nearer to Luís, tipping his head, and the weak sunlight touched on the feverish haze to his eyes. He smiled and the humor in it was both nonsensical and terribly knowing. “Anyway. That farmhouse. You’ll see it when we get over this hill.”

“I…oh, all right. The farmhouse, I mean,” Luís said, hastily returning to the matter at hand. He began to lift his hand, but Adrian looked rather sharply at it and so Luís instead twisted it to rub the dirt from his palm off on his thigh. Then he gestured at the horse. “Get on. If that other one worked, then you might as well—”

“No,” Adrian said, head and shoulders jerking back a little. Then he collected himself, but his fingers still played nervously with the dangling end of his bonds. “I—no. I can walk it. The horse will be better that way.”

Luís stared at him for a moment, uncertain as to how seriously the man meant it, and then decided that that was irrelevant. “You’ve got a fever. I think you need the horse more than the horse needs you.”

The skin around Adrian’s lips whitened as he flattened them, frustration and a touch of anger coming into his face. But then he ducked his head and laughed quietly, the sound a little ragged. He staggered with the laugh, then had to take several extra steps and even after that, it took Luís’ hand on his shoulder to steady him, but his amusement still rang out clearly over the mountain-slope.

“I know, of course,” Adrian said. He shrugged, and even through the fever, he seemed to be enjoying some private joke at Luís’ expense.

But then the color abruptly drained from Adrian’s face, as if someone had punctured a vein and was letting him bleed away. He staggered again, then abruptly slumped so Luís had to stoop quickly to get an arm about him and keep him from fully collapsing. His fingers scrabbled for purchase over Luís’ chest, then gained a hold and managed to pull him up till his chin just crested Luís’ shoulder. But there his strength seemed to give out, and in fact Luís wasn’t certain that Adrian hadn’t completely passed out, given his limpness. Luís struggled against the man’s weight—he was surprisingly well-fed for a peasant of the region—then swore and jerked harshly at Adrian, trying to get the man up and keep his hold on the horse’s reins.

That damn beast was growing nervous at nothing again, flaring its nostrils and pawing incessantly at the ground. It tugged on its lead, then whinnied when Luís irritably yanked back, wrenching over its head so Luís was dragged over several feet. Adrian’s chin bumped hard on his shoulder, then slid down his front, digging a groove in its wake. The other man stirred a little, pulling at Luís, and then slumped again as Luís forced the horse to remain still by dint of sheer force. Something like a whine escaped him, and he pushed his face repeatedly at Luís’ chest, almost like a young puppy nudging at its mother.

Luís gritted his teeth, then gave the horse’s lead one more yank to inform it that he was not in the mood to coddle it. When its head came up, he simply glowered at it, waiting for it to do its worst…and incredibly enough, that seemed to work. After a last stamp, the horse dropped its head and quieted.

Muttering a quick thanks to his patron saints, Luís then turned his attention to Adrian. He dragged the other man over to the horse, then got his hands under Adrian’s arms and lifted them so they were lying over the saddle; the fact that Adrian’s wrists were still bound did help with keeping the arms looped over the saddlehorn. Then he took a fresh grip on Adrian’s waist, preparing to lift the rest of him. At that point, Adrian seemed to regain some awareness, gasping and clawing at the saddle. He startled the horse, but by then enough of his weight was on the saddle for Luís to be able to let go and move around to take the beast by the bridle. A good shake soon put the animal in order, and then Luís wrapped the slack of the reins about his hand.

He glanced over his shoulder as he started off again, only to look again when he found Adrian staring at him as if Luís were something come out of the dark to crouch on the far side of the fire. Adrian started upon seeing that he was being watched, then cursed and dropped forward over the saddle, essentially lying on the horse’s neck. The damn thing nervously side-stepped and Adrian’s brows went up. “This isn’t a good idea.”

“Well, neither was helping you. I’m already late,” Luís muttered. His temper made him speak, and he regretted that lapse as soon as he saw the interest spark in Adrian’s eyes. “Look, if the horse throws you and you break your neck, I’ll bury you and say a prayer over the grave.”

Adrian pursed his lips, then snorted. His lips curved into a smile, though he’d turned his head so his hair hid his eyes. “But no apology?”

“All right, and an apology. When it happens.” Then they crested the hill and Luís paused to look over the new landscape. He needed a moment to pick out the farmhouse, which from this vantage-point looked well-kept and not abandoned in the least, but which blended well with the grey rocks and sparse brownish foliage, with its weathered timbers and rough siding. “But I have learned a thing or two about horses. More than about fighting, and this one isn’t the best but I think I can manage it well enough…Adrian?”

All Luís saw when he looked back this time was the loose end of the rope flapping against the horse’s withers and one crooked elbow. He bit his lip, chastising himself for the slip into flippancy, and then bit it again for wallowing. Then he reached back and picked up the rope, coiling it up around the pommel so that wouldn’t ride on the horse’s delicate nerves as well.

He’d just taken his hand away when Adrian shifted, lifting his head and then turning it so his eyes were barely visible through the thick hair. “You don’t know anything about wolves, do you?”

“No,” Luís replied. He clucked at the horse, then set off at as fast a pace as he thought Adrian could stand. When he glanced back again, he caught the other man wincing, but otherwise Adrian seemed tolerant of the speed. “Why?”

Adrian answered, but into the horse’s mane so the words were unintelligible. But his exhausted tone carried well enough, and so Luís let him be. All things considered, it was probably nothing more than fever-inspired ramblings.

* * *

The farmhouse was lacking in livestock, but other than that, it seemed as if the owners had only left for a moment. Though they clearly hadn’t left willingly: several pieces of furniture were thrown over, and a pile of broken crockery decorated one corner. The door was thrown wide open but was still soundly fastened to its frame, and the window shutters still swung easily when Luís tested them. But when he called out, nothing stirred save for several crows that launched themselves from the roof.

Not even Adrian, who by now was burning to the touch. The man was deeply asleep or unconscious, either of which was a small mercy since the horse was allowing its nerves to get the better of it again. Even after Luís took Adrian off its back and had set the man on the front step, the beast continued to snort and skitter about, and when Luís attempted to lead it towards the small shed in the back, it planted its feet in the ground and absolutely refused to follow. Luís yanked on the lead, he cajoled and threatened and pleaded, and finally he had to give up. Short of truly harming the beast, which he wouldn’t do, there’d be no moving it.

So he led it inside. The house was little more than a room with a few hides tacked up to form partitions, but when Luís took those down, he found that they’d have more than enough space. The horse thankfully didn’t seem to be averse to that, so he tied it to one side of the fireplace and then went back out and dragged in Adrian. Then he went to look about the place a little more.

First Luís went for water, and found an actual well, crudely but strongly built with a heavy cover. But the cover had been thrown to the ground, and when Luís pulled at the rope, it came up with nothing attached. He looked at the end a little more closely, noting that it wasn’t frayed, as if it’d been cut and not torn. The back of his neck began to itch and after a moment’s thought, Luís abandoned the well. A little further scouting turned up a creek that he could use instead, so then Luís retraced his steps and went into the shed.

He opened the door and the light immediately fell on the bodies. Pale as it was, it was merciless in revealing the brutal wounds and the twisted faces, and Luís had to step back out and cough hard into his wrist before the twisting in his gut lessened. He took a few breaths, crossed himself, and then reminded himself that this was a country at war. Then he took the sword off his back and went back inside.

There were three, and they’d been hanging in the rafters long enough for the blood to have drained from them, but not for the animals to have gotten much at them. Luís found a shovel and buried them, then said a quick prayer over the low mounds. Then he frowned at the sky—the stony ground had made digging slow and night came fast these days as well—and quickly went about the rest of his self-appointed tasks. He hauled water from the creek, hay and firewood from the shed, and after starting a fire, he went over the house again. The walls were mostly intact, but he found several places where the fighting had gashed the wood. Fortunately none of the planks had broken, but the lock on the door had been ripped away, and some of the bars for the shutters as well.

The nails were still left in some cases, and aside from the livestock, they seemed to have left the place largely intact so some searching turned up tools as well. Luís had enough nails to fix the windows, but he ran out when he reached the door. It was near dark anyway, but just as Luís had resolved to simply wedge a few planks across the doorway, he heard wolves howling. His fists clenched and his head jerked up without any deliberate intent on his part, and then he thought he’d better find something a little more sturdy. But for the moment, he did wedge those planks into place.

His new search turned up a broken barrel, and Luís was prying the nails from it when he heard a thump. He looked over and Adrian was struggling to sit up, his face glistening with sweat and his mouth wide open as he breathed hard and fast, as if he’d just run down the whole mountain. Adrian stared at the fire, then twisted about to face Luís.

“That root’s mashed up and I’ll dress your wounds after the water’s heated,” Luís said. He breathed in, then jerked out the last nail with a sharp exhale.

Then he put down the stave and went over to the door. He only wanted to make it hard enough for him to have some warning, not to barricade in them completely, so he didn’t have too much hammering left to do. In the morning he’d be able to get out simply by prying off the top two pieces of wood.

“Why wait?” Adrian paused as Luís came back towards him, then resumed dragging himself over to the bowl containing the paste. He put his hand towards it, then looked up with a confused frown as Luís took it from him. Then he began to speak, but a hard shiver took him and instead he clutched at the hides that Luís had mounded around him.

“Because you’re filthy. And the only bit of medicine that I think really works, so far as I’ve seen, is that if you keep the dirt out, you’ve got a better chance.” Luís raised his brows at the dubious look he received, but took the kettle off the fire anyway. He poured its steaming contents into another bowl, then set that aside to cool a little as he checked on dinner, which was still hanging over the flames. “The healthiest man I ever knew was a monk who liked to show how holy he was by bathing in an ice-cold river every day, and then he’d go off to a full day’s sinning…”

Snorting into his arm, Adrian settled back on his belly, the hides pulled up to his shoulders. He was still shaking and his shirt was soaked through with his sweat, but he seemed reasonably rational. “All right, if you want.”

He still sounded amused, but it was tempered with fatigue and with that strange, nearly reluctant acquiescence. And it faded quickly, leaving behind only a feverishly intense interest in Adrian’s eyes: he tracked every move Luís made as if his life depended on it. When Luís finally settled to deal with Adrian’s arm and could angle himself so the man’s face wasn’t in his line of vision, he felt as if he’d stepped out of an airless, dark room and into the fresh cool sunlight.

Of course they were in an airless dark room, and the wolf cries pointedly reminded Luís that there were other, more valid worries that should be on his mind. He gave himself a good shaking, then undid the linen strips and set about dressing the wound.

It was infected, he saw right away. The flesh had swollen up, red and angry, and when Luís touched a fingertip to it, Adrian let out a low cry and pushed himself against the floor as hard as he could. He clutched at the edge of one hide with his free hand, then pulled that up and began to bite at it as Luís pulled out his dagger. His shoulders jerked up and down, and then he dragged the hide from his mouth and raised his head. The hide flapped over his hand into the firelight, which clearly showed the places where his teeth had raked off the fur.

“Do it,” Adrian hissed. He looked at Luís, then at the bowl of paste. “It’ll work. And if it doesn’t, then—”

“I’ll bury you next to the others,” Luís muttered. Then he sliced through stitches and flesh, working with quick, firm motions not because he was any more convinced, but because if he didn’t, he’d never be able to finish.

As much blood as pus came out, which Luís had heard was a good sign. He rinsed out what he could before finally smearing the paste into the wounds. It actually was made of a few other herbs Adrian had picked out as well as of the tuber, and had a gritty, unpleasant texture as a result. It also smelled rather…well, Luís could stand it without sneezing, and certainly he’d found worse stenches in the butchering quarters of Milan, but nevertheless he could have happily lived his life without having encountered it.

But he kept stuffing the wounds with it, and while at first he only seemed to be squeezing out more blood, he gradually found that the paste was stanching the flow. Drying in the fire’s heat, and forming a sort of scab that would do as well as the stitches, he supposed. He still bound the arm back up in fresh bandages before moving to the leg.

Somehow Adrian had failed to pass out through the whole proceeding, and in fact, the times Luís had glanced at him, the other man had been watching so closely that Luís almost felt as if he was being supervised, which was both an unsettling and oddly comforting feeling. But Adrian held as still as possible, the hides jammed back into his mouth, till Luís had lanced his leg as well.

“What others?”

Luís’ hand missed the bowl, catching the rim instead of plunging directly into the paste. He startled slightly at the sudden clatter, only then noticing how quiet it’d grown. The fire was crackling and the wind rattled the house, but the horse was silent and the wolves seemed to have moved on. “What?”

Adrian started to answer, but had some problem with his throat. He coughed into his arm, then rubbed his mouth along it. “You said…you’d bury me…”

“Oh. Oh—in the shed. There were—the owners, I think. I gave them a good Christian burial—my Church’s prayers, since I don’t know the correct one for yours. I hope your God won’t be too offended that I can’t do more.” Then Luís jerked his hand back again, frowning. After a moment, he wadded up a rag against Adrian’s bleeding leg and then turned to fully look at the other man. “What?”

By then Adrian had settled again, but he still looked uneasy. He watched the door instead of Luís, and while his eyelashes were fluttering with tiredness, the eyes beneath them were sharply aware. And worried, it seemed. “I wish you hadn’t done that. Unless—but you said you were a priest?”

“I—” Luís closed his eyes. He took a long, slow breath, and then opened his eyes and made himself reach for the bowl. He dipped up a fingerful of paste, then smeared it over Adrian’s leg. “I was expelled. Excommunicated. So I was, but I’m not now.”

“Then I wish you hadn’t done that. You—you buried them? And said something for them?” Adrian said, his voice leaping unevenly between a low mumble and an excited yelp. He pulled in his good arm to rest his head on it, then slitted his eyes as he looked down his arm. “You untied me.”

After wiping his hands clean, Luís smoothed a bandage around Adrian’s leg and knotted it off. It really was astounding how much of the former owners’ belongings had been left—even clothes, though Luís had experienced a moment’s unsteady conscience over taking those. But, he reasoned, he could consider it the fee for funeral service. “A few prayers—from my Church, but sometimes I don’t think God really cares in what way you speak to him, as long as you mean it. And well, it doesn’t really seem like you could hurt me now.”

Then Luís reached for Adrian’s trousers to pull them up, but Adrian suddenly bent away so those were beyond reach. His forehead tapped Luís’ knee, and when Luís turned towards that, the other man rolled himself up on his elbow, head tipped far back so he could look at Luís. “I can’t. I keep—well, you wouldn’t know. You’ve never been here before, yes?”

“No,” Luís said. He snorted a little at the way their words mismatched, but then jerked around and stared hard at the door. Something had thudded outside, so close that Luís almost expected to hear voices.

Then he blinked, and wondered at himself. He couldn’t see a thing and the noise had been merely a noise, and so why would he think it was some _one_?

“I wish you hadn’t done that,” Adrian said again. His head pressed against Luís’ knee, sliding up over it till he was pillowing his cheek on Luís’ thigh. It seemed more for support than anything else, given how raggedly he was breathing. “Never mind. You find salt anywhere?”

“Yes, but—”

“Put a line of it in front of the door. And all the windows, and any gaps.” Adrian started to slump before he was finished, but managed to stay up till the last word was out. Then he gasped hard and sank against Luís. His hand grazed Luís’ calf, then pressed harder at it. “Listen. I’m trying to help here. I know my country, you don’t. Put the salt down.”

Luís glanced at him, then at the jar of salt by the fire. Then Luís looked at the door again, digging his nails into his palms as another thud came. This one was farther away, but still carried that strange air of menace.

In the end, Luís decided to get up not so much because he believed Adrian or even understood what the man meant, but because—Adrian was not moving, and Luís’ discomfort with the man’s position was beginning to grow greater than his wariness of whatever was outside. He tried to reason with himself that he was overreacting to Adrian as well as what was probably nothing more than a deer or a wolf, but then he pulled at Adrian’s shoulder and the man seized Luís’ ankle.

Adrian let go almost immediately, but by then Luís had shoved the man completely off him and stumbled back onto one foot. Then Luís grimaced and reached for Adrian, who’d fallen rather awkwardly and was clutching at his arm, but Adrian jerked from him. Then glanced up, and in the moment Luís saw his face, the man seemed oddly apologetic.

But Luís didn’t dwell on it. He got up and salted the doorway and the windowsills while Adrian watched him, and then dinner was done so he portioned that out. Much to his relief, Adrian was still able to feed himself, though a little messily. He glanced at Luís a few times, but didn’t attempt any conversation and Luís found himself less grateful for that than he might have expected. But then, the unexplained thumps and scrapes continued to periodically disturb his thoughts, and as the night went on, the wolves began to cry out again as well.

“You want to sleep, you can,” Adrian said. He blinked, apparently as surprised at the sound of his voice as Luís was, and then rolled onto his side. The sweat from his face had left a dark stain on the hide beneath him. “I’ll be up anyway.”

“With fever.” Luís doubted that he could stay up the entire night, given that he’d done that yesterday, but he thought he’d better try anyway.

He checked on the horse, then withdrew his sword from his belongings. Then, after thinking very hard about it, he took out Adrian’s sword as well and carried it back over to the fire. After laying both swords beside him—and on the opposite side from Adrian—Luís leaned back against the chimney stones. They must have been relatively well-off to have built such a thing, and they had a planked floor as well.

“This was a good resting place, a while ago. You come through the nearest pass, you end up here. A lot of travelers stopped here. But then the Turks began to come.” Adrian pulled the hides around himself more tightly, but tipped his head out of the bundle. He gave Luís that half-laughing, half-bitter smile again. “I see what you look at. I can guess.”

“I see you do know the area well. You said you’d stayed here before,” Luís said. He slipped his hand off to the side to rest it on his sword’s hilt. He’d tried to move as lightly as he could, but when he realized Adrian had noticed, he gave his own resigned shrug. “You knew about them?”

The light faded a little in Adrian’s eyes, then came again even brighter. He moved his head again, as if tossing off a bad dream, and then tucked it down while mumbling to himself. His feet scraped against the floor, and Luís was just thinking that the fever had taken him again when Adrian looked up again. “I went by here, I said. And I saw them, but I didn’t touch them. You don’t…” Adrian frowned, his brow furrowing deeply “…listen, your Church doesn’t have say here. You don’t want to deal with what you don’t know.”

“Fine, but I know at least what I’d want done to me, and I think that sort of kindness goes beyond what you say on Sunday,” Luís replied slowly. Then he glanced at the door, but that sound he actually recognized: the crows were returning to the roof. He settled back, then reached up and pulled his rosary out from his shirt and began to finger the beads.

Adrian looked that over carefully, as he seemed to do with everything else of Luís’, and then abruptly dropped his head on the floor. His lip curled as he closed, then squeezed his eyes shut. “You foreigners. You…well, I’d explain better, but if you knew what I was talking about, you’d do worse than lecture me about faith.”

“I didn’t—” The beads slipped between Luís’ fingers and he bit down on a curse, then gathered them back up and coiled them in his palm. They’d been worn smooth by use, but they still could pinch skin between them when he clenched his hand around them. He ignored that. “I think I misunderstood.”

“You did,” Adrian muttered. He jerked his head about a few times, as if bothered by a cramp in the neck, and then hit his temple against the ground. The sharp thud made the horse whicker nervously, but Adrian didn’t seem to hear and kept moving restlessly about, pushing off and then pulling back the hides. “I—look, I didn’t kill them, all right? You think I can do that with one sword? You think if I did that, I’d be walking around here without a horse, without a winter cl—I _didn’t_. Didn’t. It wasn’t my fault.”

Luís straightened a little, becoming concerned over the man’s thrashing. Then he slammed his rosary against the ground and seized Adrian’s shoulders, forcing them down just as the man tried to throw himself over Luís into the fire. This time the curses flew from Luís’ lips, and he had no time to stop them because Adrian was struggling desperately, snarling and hitting at Luís, and the horse in the corner was whinnying as well, and—Luís crushed Adrian’s arms to his sides, then tried to roll over. But Adrian braced himself and pushed back, so that Luís slid along the chimney till his ear was nearly roasting in the fire’s heat, and then Luís barely jammed back his elbow in time to keep himself from sliding farther.

It was the fever, of course, and not precisely a justification for Luís’ earlier caution, but he still wished he’d taken out the stake and rope again. For a sick man—for a healthy man, Adrian would have been impressively strong. As it was, Luís knew he’d kneed Adrian’s leg wound at least once and it hadn’t seemed to slow the man any. And then Adrian snapped at Luís: his teeth missed Luís’ neck, but the sound was crisp as a bell and startled Luís into snapping back. And his teeth met flesh.

Adrian abruptly ceased his struggling, shuddering hard and then slumping so heavily that Luís believed the man had lost consciousness again. But then a faint whine reached Luís’ ears, and a moment after that, something stroked at his chest. Then Adrian was arching a little as Luís jerked his mouth from him, the man’s fingers almost petting Luís as he pressed his face into Luís’ shoulder. “Sorry, I’m sorry, I can’t…it hurts.”

Luís stopped as he was, with his hands clamped on Adrian’s shoulders, ready to thrust the other man from him. He sat there while Adrian whimpered and rubbed his cheek against Luís’ shoulder, still pawing at his shirt, and then he slowly pulled his right hand free. After another moment, he put it on the back of Adrian’s head. The other man stiffened, then went slack, his hands falling down to rest limply at Luís’ hip. He breathed in shallowly, then out so deeply that he slipped down Luís a little bit.

Then he seemed calm. The horse was still nervous, but thankfully, it settled on its own, since Luís was hardly in a position to go tend to it as well. But then whatever it was outside thumped again, sharp and distinct, and the noise was followed by a sort of scrape, as if something was being dragged.

Adrian jerked up his head, but didn’t make a sound. He stared at the door, but then twisted almost dismissively to face the other way, rolling over Luís—though he had been lying on his hurt arm, Luís belatedly noticed. Then he put his head down on Luís’ other shoulder. “Just stay inside. It’s fine if you don’t go out—there’s the salt and then there’s the fire, and I’ll be awake too,” he said. He shifted his hips, probably trying to adjust for the leg wound, but the motion caused his calves to slide across Luís’ shins. “And if you have to do anything, use my sword.”

“Why?” Luís finally said.

“Because it’s better.” After another moment, Adrian lifted his head enough to look at Luís. The side of his mouth pulled up, a little sorry and a little grimly amused. “Look, I don’t want you to die.”

Luís glanced more sharply at him, then sighed and put his head back against the chimney. “That’s very nice of you.”

“Thanks, but…I’m sick now, all right? I don’t make a lot of sense. Ask me about this when I’m better,” Adrian mumbled. He rested his head on Luís’ shoulder again, then closed his eyes when Luís put an arm around him to pull the hides over them. Then he cracked open one eye, watching Luís take his arm away. “I’m awake. I’ll be awake. I…you want to tie me back up, you can go ahead.”

“That’s…I’m not going to tie you up,” Luís sighed, renouncing his earlier thought. It’d only been more panic, and now that he could think, he could see what a needless cruelty that would be. He hitched up his shoulder a bit, moving Adrian’s head higher on it so he could better reach the swords. Then he dug about with his other hand till he’d retrieved his rosary. “I think you need the sleep more than I do.”

Adrian snorted, then pushed his head forward a little. His breath was tickling Luís’ neck and his sweat was sticking his hair there as well, raising a bit of an itch. “I think you liked me better when I was tied up.” He coughed hard, shaking all over, then moved his head back to where it’d been. “It wasn’t that bad, actually.”

Luís was reminded of several inappropriate memories and was hard-put to suppress his own cough. He pursed his lips a few times, then grudgingly admitted that denial was no true aid, and especially not here. But God, sometimes he wished for a little simple relief like that. “I don’t think we know each other that well.”

He was expecting the other man to stiffen, but then Adrian chuckled into Luís’ chest. “No…I don’t even know your name, and you already know more about me than my mother did.”

“Luís,” Luís said, too startled by the man’s reaction to stop himself. Then he bit the inside of his mouth. The blood taste came and went, and then Luís shook out his beads. He was already behind on his penances, and this episode was only worsening that. “I won’t be going out, so stop worrying and sleep already.”

Adrian looked at him again, and no trace of humor was in the man’s face. Fever was, dulling Adrian’s eyes and making them blear frequently, but Adrian still refused to lie back till he’d thoroughly searched Luís’ face. Then he nodded, but it wasn’t contentment that allowed him to put his head down. He was satisfied at whatever he found, but at the same time, Luís had the strong sense that that was not…not what Adrian would have wanted, had he been as free as men could be to choose.

But then, that was a universal plight, and try as he might, Luís couldn’t work up much sympathy for it. He finally took comfort in the fact that at least Adrian wasn’t offended, and so that was one less sin to worry about. For the moment, he contented himself with striving for what he could, and praying for God to see to the rest.

* * *

Luís did stay up the entire night, till the first rays of dawn finally slipped through the cracks, and then he believed he fell asleep. It seemed as if he’d merely blinked, but the long yellow fingers of light reaching through shutters told him otherwise. They were uncommonly bright and he shut his eyes almost as soon as he’d opened them. Then he made to sit up, but the weight on him prevented that. It also inspired a slight panic before Luís remembered how and why he had come to be crouched in this little house among the mountains.

However much he’d dozed, it clearly hadn’t been enough. But that was as it was, and in the meantime, the needs of his body were calling. It took a moment for Luís to find his hands, and then he pushed up at Adrian to move off the other man. But then he had to stop, sudden pains in his neck and back chopping at his nerves as brutally and efficiently as any sword. Luís held very still, then slowly tried to lean back against the wall. Unfortunately, his idea only seemed to increase the pain, and in the end he had to let himself slump ungracefully down.

The pain flared up, but then died away a good deal quicker than Luís would’ve expected. He tasted a little blood and realized he’d nipped the inside of his mouth, and unclenched his jaw. Then he sighed and took proper stock of the situation, absently rubbing his tongue over the bloody spot.

Adrian had managed to keep his word and had kept Luís company for most of the night, though he’d been in no shape for pleasant conversation. Even now, he moaned and shifted against Luís, the fever burning from his skin through the thick layers of Luís’ clothing. He’d never slept for more than a few minutes, but on the other hand, he’d never been truly aware either.

It didn’t bode well for his recovery, but for the moment Luís put that aside. He was—well, he was embarrassed, but his needs were becoming rather urgent. After ensuring that he was braced properly, Luís put his hands under Adrian’s arms and lifted the man again. His joints, particularly his neck, still protested mightily, but this time they allowed him to shift Adrian off and to the side. He did his best not to jar the other man too much, and anyway Adrian was so limp, his head lolling so much that Luís put a hand up to support his neck, that likely the man didn’t feel a thing. He’d need more water; fever victims never seemed to be able to quench their thirst. So after Luís had pulled the bars from the door and seen to the horse, he picked up his waterskins and headed for the stream.

It was a sunny, deceptively pleasant-looking day despite the bitterly cold gusts that frequently sprung up. Luís paused on the front step, simply looking out over the mountains, and he had to admit they were beautiful in their distant, unforgiving way. The morning wasn’t too advanced so the light still was very white and icy, limning the slopes in a brilliant hard glow, like that of a diamond.

Then Luís stepped off onto the ground, and all thoughts of beauty were dashed from his mind as he surveyed the state of the land immediately around him. When he’d gone in for the night, the earth had been uneven and rough, but in the nature of the rest of the mountains, with boulders whose jagged edges were disguised in moss and the sparse, dry foliage. But now it looked as if a small troop had visited during the night and, not finding it to their liking, attempted to reshape it. Though Luís didn’t care much to think on what they might have been envisioning as a model.

A handful of yards away, a fresh mound of ripped-up turf formed a rough half-circle, and when Luís walked past it he found that something had raked deeply, viciously into the ground to form that wall. It had moved in parallel lines, and had used enough force so that Luís could see the white spots where tough plant roots had been torn apart. And torn was the key description there, as Luís had seen enough graves dug to know what earth looked like when a spade or a shovel had gone at it, and what he saw now was like neither of those. In fact, it looked the most like…like the scrabblings of some wild beast. But the scrapes were far too large, even for the great wolves that infested this land.

Luís hadn’t been so foolish as to leave without his sword. He reached for it now, but the hilt twisted in his hand and he surprised himself with a shiver. Then he gathered his senses together and firmly took the hilt, then pulled it free.

It had turned on him because it wasn’t his sword—it was Adrian’s, and Adrian’s sword was far broader and longer and heavier, so that Luís had to wonder that he hadn’t noticed the change in weight. But more to the point, it had a very wide cross-bar that ended in wolf’s heads, and their open mouths had caught on Luís’ fingers so his uncertain touch had only pushed the hilt about instead of securely into his palm. Not any great mystery there, at least.

But more than enough remained unknown, and if Luís attempted to muddle through them all, he was certain that he’d discover what had torn up the ground, for he’d not be able to move from the spot before it returned. And as curious as he was, he wasn’t willing to sacrifice that much for pure knowledge. So Luís cast a last look at the jumbled-up pieces of turf, and then set off for water.

* * *

Adrian half-woke when Luís changed his bandages, and also roused enough to drink the water Luís pressed on him every hour or so—judging by the sun, which was wildly inaccurate with all the mists and strange airs up here—but otherwise he barely stirred. He curled up beneath the hides and shivered, though his skin was so hot to touch that it could nearly boil water, and allowed Luís to move him about as Luís liked. His wounds didn’t look any better, but they didn’t look any worse, and the root poultice at least seemed to be keeping him from losing blood. But as it was, with them trapped too far from any sort of help, Luís couldn’t find it in him to think optimistically on Adrian’s fate.

He tried to ignore that, reminding himself that he had done as much as he could, and when called before God to explain this diversion, that he at least could plead Biblical authority. Though the parable of the Good Samaritan certainly hadn’t gone so far as to stay with that poor soul and defend him against the wolves and whatever else the mountains held.

Luis paused, his fingers stilling on the rim of the pot before him. Then he grimaced and reprimanded himself; the situation was bad enough without him indulging in folk nightmares and the like. Of course he’d heard the legends of the monsters, the dead things that came back and hunted the living, the wolves that were actually men. He was a traveler, and he’d sat around the campfires and shared his own stories—which were all true, and all quite horrifying as well, and no unnatural monster featured in any of them. The horrors he knew, and believed in, were all the doings of men.

Of course, he wouldn’t pretend to know everything. In fact, he knew he—but that was a different country. And Luís had to duck his head and laugh at himself, since it was too far in the past now for tears, if those ever did much good. He settled back on his feet and ran his dagger through the pot of water, then through a cloth. When that was wiped clean, he turned to set it aside and saw that Adrian had woken and was watching him.

“How are you feeling?” Luís said, and then winced at the banality of the question. He rubbed his hands over with the rag, then went to drop the cloth to the side.

Adrian parted his lips to answer, but his eyes followed Luís’ hands to the floor, then to something on the floor. They widened, and then the other man jerked up his arm. Startled, Luís reached for the dagger, but Adrian was only reaching up to touch his own head. He ran his fingers over it, then curled them as he dragged his hand down the side, till he’d reached his ear. His hand stayed there for a few seconds before moving over his cheek and finally sliding off so he could stare hard into his palm.

“You—”

“You kept chewing on the ends, and then I thought it might help with the—the fever.” Luís rocked back on his heels, discomforted by the way Adrian began to stare at him. He shrugged and reached for his razor, then wrapped a leather strip around the blade to protect the edge and slipped it back into one of his saddlebags. “Make you more comfortable.”

“You cut my _hair_ ,” Adrian finally said. His tone was stunned and then more, his shock clearly not a case of mere vanity or even outrage at the liberty Luís had taken. He tried to push himself up, and when he found himself too weak to do so, still rolled over onto his forearms. He stared up at Luís and a beam of light fell across his face.

It was an improper time to make such an observation, but Luís couldn’t help noticing that Adrian was, in fact, much younger than him. By a good four or five years, the man’s skin still smooth and fine; the harsh winters and brutal summers of war aged people quickly in this country, but so far Adrian had escaped that. And it was rather remarkable, since now that his hair was gone, the fineness of his features was quite pleasing to the eye. His own eyes were very striking themselves, dark and slightly slanted at the outer corners, and set beneath the delicate brows that Luís had determinedly ignored earlier.

“Sorry. The priest in me got the better of my hands,” Luís said after a moment, for lack of anything better. He _was_ sorry, but it seemed like a minor concern to him in light of Adrian’s condition, and anyway he was more sorry about the sudden lapse of mind. Though he thought—and strongly hoped—that Adrian hadn’t noticed any of that. “I…because we cut our hair when we join…”

“No, I know what you mean.” Adrian all but spat out the words as he dropped his head. His eyes closed, and then the skin around them tightened as his head jarred his arms. One of his hands rose to rub at his temple, its fingertips curling to pull at the much-shortened hairs. “What did you do with them?”

Luís blinked, then leaned back from the waterskin. “Pardon?”

“The—the clippings. The hair. What did you do with it? Did you throw it out?” From the tone of his voice, that was exactly what Adrian was expecting and he was as unhappy as he could be about it.

“No. I’ve still got them—they’re right here.” When Adrian opened his eyes, Luís moved the pot so Adrian could see the neat pile. “I was going to take them out, but if you want—”

Adrian jerked up his head, but then tipped it to the side with a grimace. He put up his hand and turned towards that, then buried his agonized expression in his palm. “Burn it. Put it on the fire,” he mumbled, digging at his face with his fingers. Then he dragged off his hand; his nails left red tracks down his cheeks. “Put it on the—”

“I did.” Luís looked at Adrian, at the frantic light in the man’s eyes, and then picked up a rag and put it into the pot. He spread it out under the surface, then pulled it carefully up so it trapped the tiny floating specks of hair in its fibers. After letting it drip a little, he tossed it onto the fire, which hissed and collapsed in the middle, but which soon roared back to its previous strength. “There. Better?”

“No,” Adrian said after a moment. He rubbed at one cheek, then sighed and put his head back on his arm. “No, but that’s not your fault. I don’t feel well.”

After retrieving one of the waterskins, Luís carefully settled himself by Adrian’s head. He was lowering the skin to the man’s mouth when Adrian lifted himself on his elbows, swaying and shaking but frowning. The man jerked from the hand that Luís put by his head, then slowly, staring at Luís the entire time, leaned forward and let his chin rest on it. The moment he did, his strength seemed to drain from him and the weight of his head dropped heavily into Luís’ hand.

Luís needed a moment to adjust, but then he had a good grip and could work around the skin. He put the end to Adrian’s lips, then lifted the skin so the man wouldn’t have to do any more than open his mouth to drink. Though Adrian worked at it anyway, eyes closed, lipping messily at the hide as he guzzled down the water as quickly as he could. There came a point where he clearly couldn’t take more, yet he whined and pushed his head after the skin as Luís drew it away.

When Luís splashed the water over the man’s neck, Adrian shivered so hard that he knocked himself off his arms. Chastising himself, Luís reached for the man, but as his hand touched Adrian’s neck, Adrian turned and rose so the curve of his throat pressed Luís’ fingers around it. Then he put his head on his arms again, breathing a little unevenly, lashes fluttering as Luís hesitantly poured more water over his head, then rubbed it down his neck and jaw.

“That’s better.” Adrian turned his head a little, so he could look at Luís with both eyes. His skin was too pale and damp with sweat, but he looked _ill_ , not deathly, so perhaps he would survive, after all.

“Sorry about your hair,” Luís said after a moment. He withdrew his hand and absently wiped it on his thigh, then shrugged and wiped the mouth of the waterskin as well. The sun hadn’t yet peaked in the sky, but he’d been working steadily since he’d woken and his thirst was considerable. “I meant—it was well-intended, if that means anything. Probably not, but…the apology’s well-intended too.”

Then he tipped the skin to his mouth. It had been sitting by the fire for a while, so it had warmed to the point that Luís barely felt it flowing down his throat. It wasn’t terribly refreshing. Luís shrugged again and put the skin to the side, then began to stand. Something fumbled past his ankle, then pulled weakly so he looked down. Then he sat back down again, keeping his foot out so he wouldn’t inadvertently wrench at Adrian, since it seemed like the man was expending all his strength on keeping his hand wrapped about Luís’ ankle. “What’s the matter?”

“You think I’m going to die? Is that why you’re humoring me?” Adrian asked, voice abruptly rougher. The fever flared in his eyes, then died down, but the jerky, rushed way he rolled onto his arms showed that that mind-corrupting heat hadn’t gone far. “I’m not. I know—it’ll be bad tonight, and then tomorrow it’ll be better.”

He tightened his hold on Luís’ ankle, then hitched up and Luís realized the man was trying to sit. The hides shook down Adrian’s back, revealing bare skin because sometime while Luís had been out, the other man had squirmed out of his shirt. That crumpled bit of cloth squeezed out from under him as he dragged himself forward, working himself up Luís’ shins. His hands went over Luís’ knees, then slipped and one slid up the inside of Luís’ thigh. And then Luís finally shook himself out of the strange daze that’d taken him.

“Lie down, maybe you’ll be better but this can’t be—”

“I’m trying to _help_ you,” Adrian insisted, pushing away Luís’ hands. He even slapped at one before Luís caught his wrist and bent it back. He grimaced, dropping a little, but then he surged up so sharply that Luís jerked backwards before grabbing his shoulders. “You have to _listen_ \--”

Luís yanked his head to the side, just averting a collision of their heads as Adrian briefly collapsed. He pulled at the wrist he still held, then twisted it again, forcing it behind Adrian’s back. Something hooked the edge of his coat, then started to jerk it down his arm and he half-fell backward in his attempt to free his arm. But that failed, and then Adrian’s head knocked sharply into the underside of Luís’ jaw, causing Luís to bite the inside of his mouth. Blood washed over his tongue as Luís reflexively smashed his jaw down, then jerked Adrian up and forward while the other man was still reeling.

He got Adrian’s other wrist somehow—it wasn’t planned and he was merely trying to get any hold he could on the other man—and forced it up behind Adrian, beside the other one. Adrian swore at Luís, jerking sharply so his knees slammed into Luís’ shins and feet, then tried to throw himself forward even more, presumably to knock Luís off-balance. But Luís’ grip on the man’s wrists allowed him to yank the man the other way, then to twist them both to the side so Luís wouldn’t fall into the fire behind him. A low, pained gasp came from Adrian: his chin hit the top of Luís’ shoulder, then scraped down the front of Luís’ chest as the man slumped.

It had taken no more than a few seconds, not even amounting to a minute. But Luís was gasping by the end, the cold dry air stinging his lungs and the sweat running down his face for the salt in it to sting the bitten places on his lip. He could see that Adrian was in no shape to continue struggling, and in fact was lying as limp as a wet cloth against him, but Luís couldn’t bring himself to loosen his grip.

Well, history seemed to argue against it, he thought. He took another deep breath, then forced the next one to be shallower. Then he pried his fingers from Adrian’s wrists. When he let go, the other man slumped further, unable to support himself, and Luís had to jam his hands under Adrian’s arms to keep the man’s head from falling between his legs. He started to lift the man aside, but then noticed that a dark stain was coming through the bandage on Adrian’s arm and instead turned Adrian to look at that.

The graze at his shoulder made Luís stiffen. One of his hands dropped back to Adrian’s wrist. Then Luís jerked it back, but Adrian had already snorted. The man settled his head on Luís’ shoulder, facing away from Luís. “Shit. Sorry.”

“I am trying to listen, but I don’t think I’m learning too much. Except that I don’t like being attacked, and so I’ll never be a great fighter,” Luís finally said. He didn’t feel as amused as he sounded, but he couldn’t manage much anger towards the other man, given how shaky Adrian’s self-control clearly was. “I’m going to look at your arm again. I think you might have ripped out the few stitches I left.”

“I’m not attacking you.” Adrian grimaced as Luís lifted his arm, then rolled slightly as Luís pulled the limb straight. His hair brushed up against the side of Luís’ neck, though it took a moment for Luís to realize what it was since the sensation had changed so much. A strange combination of bristle and softness now, whereas before it’d felt like…like seaweed, long and shapeless and perpetually clammy. “I just…well, you weren’t what I was expecting. It makes it a little difficult.”

Then he hissed and arched, his feet kicking a little at the floor. Luís let him, then resumed unwinding the bandage. When it’d come halfway undone, Luís realized that the stain was the wrong color for blood, but he kept unwinding anyway. If it was pus or worse, he’d still need to look at the wound. “Well, I’m sorry I was lost in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I’d known, be sure that I would’ve made it happen differently.”

The ends of Adrian’s hair pushed into Luís’ neck, momentarily feeling like so many fine needles. Then his head rocked back and the slight prickling sensation on the side of Luís face said Adrian was looking at him. “Just what kind of priest are you?”

“I’m not. I’m defrocked. I told you, remember?” Luís undid the last round of cloth, then pushed that aside. He tried to look at the wound, but with his back blocking most of the light, he could make out little besides the thick dried root-paste.

Adrian caught on after Luís had pushed him up and put down an arm to help brace himself. He could only hold himself up for a moment, but that was long enough for Luís to slip out from under him, and then Luís could lower the other man to the ground while Adrian continued to curiously stare at him. “For what?”

Then he winced, jerking his arm towards himself. He forced himself to stop before his arm had moved more than a few inches, then pushed it back. But Luís didn’t put his fingers back on it. Instead he stared down in the direction of the arm, but failed to actually see it.

“That bad?”

Luís blinked, then looked sharply up. He was briefly confused by the lack of anything before him, but then he remembered and looked down, and then met Adrian’s wary but interested eyes. “It wasn’t for my sense of humor,” he said. He picked up Adrian’s arm again, then paused. “It wasn’t because I was unhappy being a priest either. Well, as far as I thought I knew what being one meant.”

The flesh around the remaining stitches seemed a little strained, but was intact. More importantly, nothing had turned black and what little pus that managed to seep from under the paste was running clear, and not yellow or green. Adrian might be right about his condition, at least in regards to his arm. He still was blistering hot against Luís’ hands.

“You’re a decent soldier, at least from what I’ve seen.” When Luís let his arm go, Adrian rested it on the floor and then turned over onto his side, lying half-curled with his head tipped up so he could watch Luís. “You fight fine, and you don’t lose your head. That’s about all you need.”

“And you’d know?” Luís picked at the discarded bandages, then decided that one, they were too stained to reuse, and two, he had scavenged enough clothing to spare another shirt for a new wrapping. “How old are you?”

The boards creaked and rattled as Adrian moved about, sometimes chuckling and sometimes hissing to himself. “I’m twenty…oh, twenty-three or so. And I’ve been fighting since I was twelve, and I think I’ve seen more battles than you.”

It wasn’t a boast, merely a simple statement. When Luís glanced over his shoulder, he found Adrian lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling, no particular expression on his face. Probably the man had intended it to be taken that way as well. “On second thought, I think you have, too. I didn’t pick this up till I was about your age. Right now.”

Adrian’s brow furrowed, and then he turned heavily over so he could look at Luís again. “Why?”

“I wasn’t a priest anymore and I needed something to get me out—I needed something else to do,” Luís said after a moment. He found the shirt he was looking for and sliced it into strips with his dagger as he walked back over to Adrian. “Who’ve you fought for?”

Adrian blinked, then raised his brows and widened his eyes. “You want me to keep track? Most of the time nobody even knows who’s leading the army—somebody runs off, somebody else gets planted on a stake and we go to somebody else…”

“Well, at least you’d know whether they were Hungarians or—”

“Romanian,” Adrian said sharply. He stared up at Luís, his lips pressed tightly together, before abruptly looking off to the side. “I’m Romanian, I fight for Romania.”

Luís nodded and kept his silence as he squatted down with the bandages. The vehemence in Adrian’s voice was still echoing about the small room, and it seemed oddly wrong to Luís to disturb it. Anyway, he would have had nothing particularly remarkable to say in reply, and Adrian could know that Luís had heard and understood without needing words to confirm it.

“These others…they keep coming and wanting the land without really understanding it. They even…it’s all one, not Wallachia and Transylvania and…they came up with those lines and names, not Romanians. This used to be one land, before them,” Adrian continued after a moment. His voice was much softer and more hesitant, as if he was having difficulty sorting his thoughts in order. But then he flicked a look at Luís, and the fever-glint aside, he was quite aware. “And then they laugh, when anybody tries to explain. But look, this isn’t your land. You don’t know it. And then when things happen at night, you blame us.”

“That’s a foolish attitude. I agree with you there.” Luís let his fingers slow over Adrian’s arm, then grimaced at his carelessness and unwrapped the bandage. He used his thumb to pin down the end more firmly just above Adrian’s elbow, then began to smooth it back about the bicep. “But are you really not responsible for everything that happens at night? I have—”

The corners of Adrian’s mouth twitched up, and then he laughed, his eyes closing almost completely. “Oh, all right. True. So you have done some fighting. Real fighting?”

“In Germany,” Luís acknowledged. Also a little in Sweden, but that had been skirmishes and brawls, not pitched battles. And some of it had been personal, so Luís preferred not to think on that time too much.

“Saxons,” Adrian snorted. He added an unpleasantly descriptive epithet, then dropped his head back, sighing. The pallor in his face seemed to deepen, and he closed his eyes again, but this time it was a sign of feebleness and not of amusement. “So you’re different? You’d listen?”

He sounded both hopeful and challenging, ready to take the worst, but wanting to be surprised. The attitude was familiar in a way that struck a sudden pang in Luís’ chest.

“I just don’t think I know anything,” Luís eventually said. Low under his breath, so that he wasn’t entirely sure that Adrian had heard him. At the same time, he tied off the bandage and rose so he wouldn’t see the other man’s reaction.

Luís busied himself with preparing the midday meal, and when he was done, he turned to bring over Adrian’s share. But the other man was huddled up, arm tucked over his head, and when Luís came nearer, he saw that Adrian had fallen asleep. So instead he pulled the hides back over him, then ate alone.

* * *

Adrian woke shortly before sunset, when Luís was smearing fresh paste over the man’s leg wounds. He did no more than glance at the door before he began to hiss and snarl and struggle, half-coherently scolding Luís for not laying down a fresh salt line. In the end, Luís went around and put down fresh salt before the door and all the windows to placate the man.

“No, you don’t,” Adrian snorted. After the last windowsill had been salted, he’d settled down, but he continued to mutter irritably to himself. “I told you.”

“You’ve also told me that somebody named Chivu pleasures himself in haystacks because they look like him.” Luís paused, then added that slip of temper to his list of confessions to make whenever he next found a Catholic priest. Then he reached over and took Adrian’s knee firmly in hand while the other man was still staring in shock at him. “I know you’re ill and this is difficult, but I would understand quicker if you just told me directly whatever’s on your mind. Just like I would trust you more if you stopped trying to knock in my skull.”

After another moment, Adrian instead turned to hide his head in the crook of his arm. He rubbed his nose into his elbow a few times, then jerked up his head as Luís’ fingers slipped and prodded a sore spot on his leg. He held the position, stiff as iron, for a few seconds before slowly collapsing. His arms tucked in so his shoulders jutted up, but his head went down to nearly touch the floor.

“I said I was sorry about that,” Adrian said reluctantly. He craned his head past his arm to look at Luís, then rolled back onto his good arm as Luís finished with his leg and got up. “Can I have some water?”

Luís glanced back, then took a step to the left, where the waterskins were. He used his foot to push one within Adrian’s reach because he was using his hands to knead the small of his back, which was badly aching. He wasn’t that _old_ , he irritably thought. He wasn’t even thirty yet.

The water sloshed around in the skin, then splashed against the wood. When Luís turned, Adrian straightened as if on the defense, but then turned up his palms, looking helpless and resigned to it. “I can’t…”

His hands were trembling violently against the boards. They withdrew as Luís got back down on the floor, then slid part of the way back to help hold up his head as Luís poured water into his mouth. Adrian swallowed a few times, but then jerked away and Luís started to lower the skin, concerned that the man was choking. But before he could completely drop the skin, Adrian pushed his head under it, letting the trickle run over the back of his neck. He dropped on his arms, letting out a low, long sigh.

The water slicked over his neck and shoulders, and when Luís lifted the skin away, the excess remaining on Adrian’s skin beaded up, pooling between his shoulderblades and around the bumps of his skin. Luís found himself looking at the way the firelight reflected off the droplets a touch too long and twisted on his feet. He dropped the skin to the side, then passed his hand over his face and back through his hair.

“Haven’t done that in a while, either.” Adrian had turned onto his side and was rubbing at his hair, shaking out the water from it. The strands bent under his fingers, but then sprang back as their pressure moved on, grouping into messy clumps. “Leaping at you.”

“A day,” Luís corrected.

The other man snorted, then stretched out his head, tipping it all the way back so the yellow light painted the inside curve of his throat gold. His eyes were mostly closed, with only a gleaming sliver showing beneath the long lashes. “That’s a long time here. You’ve heard about Vlad Draculea, haven’t you? If there’s—”

“Yes.” Then Luís silently chastised himself for the hastiness with which he’d answered. He busied himself with serving out his portion of dinner, then sneaked a glance at the other man, only to find that Adrian was staring intently at him. So Luís resigned himself to admitting it, and openly looked over. “The Transylvanian who’s all that stands between the West and the Turks. What about him?”

Adrian’s lip curled a little, and when he spoke again, his tone was slightly sarcastic. “Well, they said he invited a lot of boyars to dinner once. A very nice meal. And then he asked them how many princes they’d served in their lifetimes, and one said thirty, and another…well, the youngest said seven. You see.”

“More or less,” Luís nodded.

“And so he had them killed. Didn’t like the truth.” When Luís pushed a bowl towards him, Adrian raised himself a little but made no move to reach out for it. He stared at Luís, then shrugged as Luís let go of the bowl. “So that’s how it’s like around here.”

“No stability. God, it sounds just like h—Milan,” Luís said, catching himself this time. He lifted his hand towards his bowl, but then sighed and abandoned that to take up Adrian’s bowl. He stopped there, eying the other man. “Are you feeling that badly? Or are you just hoping I’ll come close enough?”

For a while Adrian just gazed at him, that opaqueness having thrown itself over the man’s eyes again. But his lips pursed a few times, and the muscles of his throat shifted slowly as he swallowed. Then a twig snapped outside and Adrian jerked his head up, eyes bright and piercing. But he was looking behind Luís, at the door.

Luís began to turn, but stopped when Adrian moved again, sighing and dropping back to the floor. The other man pressed his cheek against the boards, then rubbed it slowly in a circle. “Well, yes and no. It’d be easier if you didn’t act like a—a damn priest. You keep—you’re not one now, so can’t you enjoy yourself a little? You earned it.”

“I think you’re talking through your fever again,” Luís said. He glanced over his shoulder, but saw nothing untoward and so he twisted back and knelt down by Adrian’s head. “As far as I can tell, all I did was be humane.”

“You cut my hair and bit my neck.” At least, that was what Adrian’s mumble sounded like. He closed his eyes very tightly and pushed at the floor again, as if he had a headache. “I—look, you saved me, you—”

“Even if I’m not a priest in the eyes of the Church, I’m one in my own eyes. Consider it a duty of mine, and not an obligation on you,” Luís snapped. He had to put down the bowl to avoid doing anything foolish. He took a breath, then leaned back to press his fists against his knees.

Adrian cracked open one eye and tilted his head so he could see Luís. Then he snorted, the corners of his mouth curling derisively, and rolled himself onto his elbows so quickly and fluidly that Luís started backwards, nearly falling over. A ghost of a smile lingered on Adrian’s face as he watched Luís steady himself, but his eyes were already dark and sober. “It doesn’t matter what you think, unfortunately. Things are different here.”

“Well, I refuse.” Luís looked at him for another moment, then bit back a more acerbic reply and put down a hand. He got off his feet and sat down properly, then reached back for his bowl and began eating. When Adrian tired, as he generally did, then Luís would feed him. Charity didn’t necessarily require throwing oneself into every trouble that occurred. “It can’t be right if I don’t want it.”

“I don’t know if I want it either, but…” The shrug moved the hides further down Adrian’s back, exposing him to the waist, and that almost distracted from the flicker of bitterness in his eyes. But then he snorted again, and ducked his head to rub at his chin. “I don’t know. You’re not that bad. I deserve worse.”

After swallowing his mouthful, Luís began to put down his bowl. Then he lifted it, and then he put it down and reached for his rosary. When it was half-out, he changed his mind and jerked away his hand, but his fingers were tangled in the beads and he only succeeded in tearing it completely out of his shirt. He winced as a few beads nipped the skin of his neck, then let out a long, low exhale as he reluctantly pulled it over his head. “I don’t even know what we’re talking about.”

“I wasn’t trying to attack you.” Adrian paused, looking off to the side. His hand drifted back to his neck, its fingers curling under as he pressed at a spot. “Not after the first two times. It’s just—I’m sick, and you won’t do what you should…you don’t know what to do, and it makes it…hard. So sometimes, you know, you want something, but you are in too much of a hurry, and you try too hard to get it…”

“I know,” Luís muttered. He looped the rosary over his hand so the cross lay against his palm, then closed his fingers over it till the points began to sting. He knew Adrian was staring at him, but didn’t bother looking up. “But if this is a custom of yours, then it’s a custom of yours. I’m still Portuguese, and I don’t take what isn’t freely given to begin with.”

The beads clicked, then pulled taut so Luís looked up, then down over his hand. He raised a brow at Adrian, who gave the string a last tug before he drew himself up, his cheek just missing Luís’ shin. He had pulled himself far enough out of the hides for Luís to see that Adrian shed his trousers as well—Luís heard a low noise and jerked up his head, then started to lift a hand to his mouth as he realized who’d made that noise. Then he put it down; he was embarrassed to be caught in another lapse, but it would do no good and probably more harm to pander to his pride and pretend it hadn’t happened.

“Is that why you were thrown out?” Adrian asked. He pushed himself up a little more, his arms brushing against Luís’ legs. His eyes tracked Luís’ hand as it came towards him, and then he turned slightly so that that landed on his neck instead of his shoulder.

Luís let it rest there for a moment. “No,” he said, and then he pushed Adrian away.

Adrian slipped off, but then twisted about and seized Luís’ wrist before Luís could pull back his arm. Then he began to rise, and Luís’ patience ran out.

“It was a woman,” he snapped. He watched Adrian go still, then sink to the floor, looking as if he hadn’t quite understood. Perhaps he hadn’t, given the fever, and so Luís continued in a low, flat voice. “A lovely, highborn lady, and her husband found out. I think she’s dead, I don’t know what happened to my daughter, and I had to leave ho—the country. I could have died, but I was a coward and called in enough favors to only be excommunicated and exiled.”

The blankness came and well on Adrian’s face. His fingers shifted on Luís’ wrist, a few of their nails grazing the inside before he loosened his grip, letting his hand slide till it barely covered the back of Luís’ hand. He blinked once, and then nodded. “Oh.”

Luís raised his brows.

“That’s terrible. Especially your daughter. I mean that, truly,” Adrian said quietly. He lowered his gaze, then drew in a deep breath and looked up again, hitching his shoulders. “But you were still looking at me. That’s true, too.”

“I know, and that’s another…I’m a very, very sinful person. Why do you think I’m on pilgrimage?” It was—not that hard, afterward. Not that hard to breathe, and let the tension flow from his back, and then even wince as the ache there returned. Of course that was mere minutiae, but that was life, unfortunately. And much as Luís tried to hold onto the proper attitude, he found himself forgetting over and over again the terribleness of the past in the motions of the present. He was too practical; he should’ve been a farmer, he sometimes thought, and not someone responsible for the spiritual nature of man. “But I’m trying to do penance, and anyway, I’m serious about not wanting it. Whatever _it_ is.”

Adrian sank back a little, several emotions warring over his face. He finally settled for frustrated disbelief. “I think you know, and…and maybe I would like it, aside from having to—”

“Then you’re also still ill and I don’t think I can fairly rely on your word, and also I just don’t—”

Something slammed against one of the windows. Luís jerked around and saw a splintered piece of wood spinning across the floor. He retraced its path and snatched at the swords in the corner, fumbling the nearest into his hand—it was Adrian’s, judging by the weight—as he looked up at the window. The bar across it had held, but there was a large hole in one of the shutters, and just beyond that, in the dark, something moved.

A sharp snarl right beside Luís nearly made him whip around and slash with the sword. He did in fact turn, but the sword tip knocked against the stones of the fireplace and almost pulled the sword from his hand. Luís pivoted back to regrip the hilt, then was turning again when Adrian abruptly pressed up against him, head to Luís’ chest and hand gripping Luís’ thigh so tightly that Luís couldn’t move any further. The snarling was from him, and he continued it so loudly that Luís looked about the room expecting to see the boards rattling.

The horse had backed as far from the broken window as it could, but otherwise it seemed to have turned to stone. It didn’t make a sound, though as Luís squinted through the dim space, he realized it was trembling. And Adrian was trembling, though Luís was damnably slow in realizing the meaning of that. When he did, he pushed his arm back and around Adrian to lend the man some support, but Adrian slumped so sharply that the effort nearly put them both on the ground. It briefly silenced Adrian, and in that silence, Luís thought he heard a sort of snuffling come from the outside.

He pulled Adrian back up, slipping his arm around the man’s waist, and Adrian sucked in his breath. But then he snarled again, and so it was entirely possible that the man merely needed the air for that. It certainly was astonishing how long he went before his next breath, and then…then there was pattern in the sound as well. Luís had long enough to realize that, listening to it and hearing the changes in pitch and roughness.

When Adrian fell silent, the difference was so startling that Luís flinched, and then flinched again as the sword thumped against the ground. He glanced at it, then at the broken window.

“You can put that down,” Adrian rasped. He muffled a cough, but so badly that he heaved a racking long second one into Luís’ chest, his fingers driving hard into Luís’ thigh.

After another look at the window, Luís reluctantly put down the sword, but kept it within easy reach. He moved slowly—uncertain if he was trying not to startle himself, Adrian, or possibly something else—as he reached around and pulled Adrian up. Initially Luís meant to help the man lie down, but Adrian’s fingers snagged in his shirt, and then the man pressed his face into Luís’ shoulder when Luís was trying to get a hand free to disentangle them. And…and Luís took a long breath, and slung his arm back around Adrian to hold the man better.

Luís reached out and retrieved the fallen hides, absently noting that his hand was shaking. He tucked one up about Adrian’s waist, pushing it between them. Then he tried to wrap another around the man’s chest, but Adrian wouldn’t allow himself to be pushed away for that, flexing his fingers so his ragged nails went through Luís’ shirt.

“So there’s another story they tell around here. It’s about the dead. You see, there’s so much evil in people, it can’t rest even when somebody dies. It goes into their body, and makes them walk again.” Adrian shuddered, his hands dragging down Luís’ chest. Then he pushed them back up and turned his head, laying his cheek against Luís’ shoulder. His forehead touched the side of Luís’ neck and it was hot but not as hot as it’d been last night. “If it makes you feel better, our priests can’t make them rest either.”

“I’ve heard that story,” Luís said after a moment. He looked at the cracked shutter again. He couldn’t bring himself to believe what he hadn’t seen, but what he did see now was that the break was very precisely made. Whatever it’d been, it had applied a great deal of force to only the slat that one would need to knock out in order to reach the window latch. But that latch had been broken when they’d arrived and so Luís had put a bar across the window, and sometimes one was rewarded for prudence. “Is there one about snarling, and wolves?”

Adrian was in the middle of exhaling. His breath stuttered a little, then finished in a sigh. Then he was silent and still for a very long time, but just before Luís pulled away to check on him, he leaned back of his own accord. At the same time his arm went around Luís’ neck, keeping their faces close together.

He stared at Luís, his brows slightly pulled towards each other. His eyes weren’t opaque, but instead were so clear that Luís could see too far into them to make any sense of what he saw. The planes of his face were perfectly smooth.

“I took the wrong side, this last time. And it came back, and—I was off where I shouldn’t have been, playing at being a great soldier, and the lord who was paying me came and killed half of my own people. The other half threw me out, and so I don’t have a lord now,” Adrian finally said. His lips barely moved, and his voice was so low that Luís had to strain to hear, though their noses were barely apart. “I need one. I don’t…I need penance, too. But…I think I like you, now that I know you a little. So I don’t know how good I can be, but I want to help. I have to.”

Then he leaned in, and Luís felt the warmth of the man’s lips just touch his own before he twisted his head aside. He heard the slight wet click of Adrian’s mouth opening to speak and shook his head. “I’m looking for Draculea.”

Adrian didn’t say anything.

“I’m defrocked, but that doesn’t mean I’m out of the Church,” Luís explained. Badly, he thought, and then winced instead of trying to collect his thoughts. “I owe—debts. So my pilgrimage, it’s to see Draculea, and deliver a message to him. Because he’s in my faith now, and certain people—are interested in his fate. I’ve been trying to find him for months now.”

“Ah,” Adrian sighed. He dropped his head to the side, then shook himself like a dog wringing off water. Then he gasped and Luís looked in concern at him, but the gasp turned into a dry chuckle. “I thought there had to be something wrong with you. You want to see _him_?”

“I know—” Luís started.

Adrian’s mouth was too hot, over-warmed by fever, and clumsy with haste. His lips were dry and cracked, scratching over Luís’ mouth—then chin, for Adrian couldn’t hold himself up and while Luís’ hands had flown to the other man’s arms, he was too indecisive to do any more than that. He didn’t push the man away, but neither did he offer any support.

It took a little while, but eventually Adrian noticed the lack of response. His fingers scraped down Luís’ arm and shoulder, then dug in as his mouth abruptly slipped off the edge of Luís’ jaw. He jerked himself to a halt, breathing sharply, and then put his head on Luís’ shoulder. His cheek rested there, light as a feather, for one moment before he sighed and turned his head to face Luís’ neck.

“Well,” he murmured, his lips tickling Luís’ skin. “You’re lost, aren’t you?”

Luís flexed his fingers a little, then dropped them to the hides piled around them. The tips of his longest fingers grazed Adrian’s hips and Adrian shifted up as Luís pulled them away, pushing into Luís. “This is where you say you’ll help with that.”

“But I will.” Something like a chuckle rasped from Adrian’s throat. His right hand dragged down Luís’ arm till it reached the elbow, then wrapped around that joint. Loosely, not enough to impair Luís as he retucked the hides around the man. “If you don’t like it, that’s not my fault. You’re the one who wants to see him.”

“Not really,” Luís muttered. Then he jerked up his head, every muscle stiffening again as something lurched heavily outside. He curled, then uncurled his hands. Then he stifled a curse and moved them, only then realizing that he was half-kneading Adrian’s back.

Adrian had tensed as well and lifted his head slightly, but now he put it back on Luís’ shoulder. He stretched out, his hips pushing back, then slackened, his breath sighing across the side of Luís’ neck. His mouth touched there as well, then drifted away. “It’s fine, they won’t come in. Just don’t cross the salt.”

No sensible answer to that was possible, so Luís kept his silence. He moved his hands to Adrian’s hips, intending to push the man off and to the floor, but froze as a large body lumbered heavily against one of the walls, causing the shutters on that side to clatter and creak. His breath sped up, then never quite slowed, though he told himself he still hadn’t seen anything of substance.

Luís startled as Adrian shifted against him, but the other man was only making himself comfortable, letting his legs unknot a little from under him, seating his head more firmly on Luís’ shoulder. His forehead still burned with fever, and of course that had to be affecting his senses, but his relaxation was oddly comforting. At least, it helped Luís think that whatever it was, someone knew about it and therefore it didn’t carry the extra menace of mystery.

And so Luís was weak, like the flawed man he was. He left Adrian as he was, only moving to pull his feet out from beneath himself when they began to numb. Scratches and thuds continued to drift in from outside, but inside the fire crackled reassuringly, and the slow, regular breathing that wafted against Luís’ neck was evidence that even out here, humanity survived.

* * *

Thick as Luís’ finger. He inhaled sharply, then put his hand on his knee and pushed himself to his feet.

“Be bigger tonight.” Adrian leaned heavily against the jamb, his face half-hidden by the wood. What was visible was still sickly pale, but his eye was less bright and his skin looked dry instead of being slicked over with cold sweat. “But we can make the next village by dusk, and that’ll be far enough.”

Luís looked at him, then at the fresh scratches along the wall planking. Then he crossed himself, muttering a prayer from his childhood, and stepped back. “How far is it?”

“Close enough.” As Luís neared him, Adrian withdrew into the room, but then startled as the horse let out a loud whinny. Then he snorted, his teeth flashing, and dropped back against the jamb so that Luís brushed his arm instead of passing clear of him. He had managed to dress himself, but he must have sweated off a few pounds, since the shirt hung so loosely on him that nearly all of his collarbone protruded from the collar. The hide he had over him threatened to smother him. “Even I can make it.”

While Adrian had displayed remarkable tenacity and stamina over the past few days, Luís couldn’t help a skeptical glance. He continued on into the house, looking about to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything in packing. “You’re riding the damn horse. Even if we have to wander around for hours looking for that plant you used the last time.”

A sharp sort of cough came from Adrian, but when Luís turned around, the other man was staring out at the mountainside. The shoulder nearest Luís lifted and fell, then wiggled dismissively. “All right, if you say so.”

Luís chewed on the side of his lip, then shrugged himself and picked up a pair of saddlebags. “I don’t pretend that I know a lot about horses—you probably do know more. But you’re still not well, and I would feel…immoral if I rode and had you walk.”

“It’s not making me if I ask for it,” Adrian muttered. Then he sighed and slouched against the doorway, so that his head tipped to the side till it rested against the wood. He flipped his hand about, then swung it up out of view. “I…all right, we would go faster. I’ll look for that plant. Just…just watch the horse.”

As the animal in question had just skittered over Luís’ foot during his attempt to load it up, Luís had no doubt that he would see to that chore. He bit down his curse and did his best not to diminish his dignity, but then realized Adrian had seen the whole sequence of events. So Luís surrendered to the inevitable and stabbed his foot at the ground till the pain ebbed, and then he hefted the bags pointedly over the horse’s back.

Adrian watched Luís deal with the horse, then lead it out. Then he came slowly after, walking up at a very acute angle to the horse’s left. At first Luís thought that Adrian was trying not to let the beast see him, but then he felt the breeze on his face and realized the other man was walking into the wind.

“Do you…” Luís started.

“No.” And Adrian mounted the horse without help, though the way his face suddenly greyed spoke of the effort it took out of him. He immediately slumped over the pommel as the horse quickstepped and snorted repeatedly, shaking its rump as if it meant to buck.

Luís pulled the reins taut, then seized the bridle when he was near enough. He talked to the beast in Portuguese, telling it not to do that because he wasn’t very good with patience in the best of times, and that this was nothing near the best, and all sorts of other nonsense. Basically whatever came into his head then went out his mouth, and its only real value was in the tone, since it seemed that certain horses responded very like donkeys. And Luís had known his share of asses, of all varieties.

He suppressed a laugh, then put his hand on the horse’s mane and tugged to make it start moving, since it had calmed down. But after a few steps, he looked back at the farmhouse, with its gaping door and broken windows.

“Just leave. The mountains will see to that before anyone else comes out here.” Adrian had pushed himself up a little, but he remained hunched so far over that his head nearly touched Luís’ hand. He shook his head, then grimaced. Then sighed, and gingerly began to lay down along the horse’s neck.

The man’s reflexes weren’t too dulled by illness, and so he narrowly escaped a broken nose. His hand scraped over the saddle, then lashed out into the air as the damn horse did buck, throwing out its hindlegs so that its head bashed into Luís’ shoulder. Luís stumbled back, absorbing the blow, and then yanked as hard as he could on the reins, shouting—something obscene, at any rate. He’d just about had enough of the damn beast’s antics and was almost willing to abandon it, at this point.

Fortunately for it, and for them, the horse had enough sense to stop. It still seemed uneasy, swinging its head from side to side, but it began to walk again. This time Luís didn’t allow them to stop. “I know,” he said tightly.

“I wasn’t going to say anything.” When Luís glanced back, Adrian had managed to sit up, but he looked neither comfortable nor steady. He lifted his head, but then had to fumble for a handhold on the saddle as he swayed, blinking furiously. Then he shook himself, ducking his head to rub against his shoulder. “I’m sorry it’s so much trouble for you.”

Luís took a breath, held it while he recited what would have been two beads of the rosary in his head, and then let it slowly out. Then he shook his head and merely pulled out the reins so they hung without any twists. “Well, it’s not your fault your charms don’t work on the horse. It doesn’t seem to like anybody, so…”

“You know, sometimes I think you are listening, and sometimes I don’t know,” Adrian said after a long moment. His tone was thoughtful, if a little reticent. “Do you just—”

“I don’t want to talk about it. Not—not now, anyway, when we’re not even away.” Though it looked to be a pleasant day, with a weak sun and the clouds insubstantial enough so that they wouldn’t have to worry about rain or snow. The breezes were not bad either, and the horse at least was walking with enough of a spring in its step. It would manage the whole trip, though the ache in Luís’ back and the tired strain behind his eyes made Luís wonder if he would. “I don’t want to think about it that closely. If I do, then it’s going to make things very difficult for me.”

Adrian made a sound that approximated a shrug. “It’s different out here. You can’t help that.”

“No, but I can’t help anything in nature, can I? I’m nothing but a man, and the world is very large. It’s not possible for one to know everything, and the sooner one admits that, the wiser he is.” Luís stumbled a little on the steep slope before turning the horse sideways, in order to take a more diagonal path. The incline would be less that way, and he would be less likely to add a turned ankle to all his other problems. “But still, man should be able to learn, if he applies himself and reasons carefully.”

“Is that what they teach priests where you come from?” Adrian asked skeptically.

After a moment, Luís settled on a short laugh. He shook his head, wrapping up some of the slack reins in his hand. “No. God, no. That’s what we’re supposed to root out as heresy. God is irrational, faith is irrational. You start thinking that reason’s the path to everything and then you start thinking you can figure out God. And then what do you need a Church for?”

“Well, somebody has to bury you, don’t they?” Adrian let out a low chuckle, then shifted in the saddle. “You sound like you were a bad priest anyway.”

“I was,” Luís said without thinking. Then he heard himself, and his breath stopped for a moment. But even after he’d resumed breathing, he walked on, looking without seeing, before a stone beneath his foot finally roused him.

He looked up, and found that they had gone quite a distance while he had been thinking. The house was still visible, but only just, its walls blending into the surrounding brush, and down below Luís thought he could make out a line winding its way between the boulders, the grass slightly browner there than it was around the trail. If it was a trail; he reminded himself not to raise his hopes unnecessarily.

“Not that I went into it for the faith in the first place.” Then Luís turned, thinking he’d heard a sound.

Adrian jerked his head to the side, but then slid his eyes back to continue watching Luís. He rubbed at his arm, then pulled up the hide from where it’d fallen about his waist. Probably Luís should’ve given the man some rope to help tie that on—Luís flinched from that, then chastised himself for the flinch. It had happened, he had thought at the time that it had been a reasonable decision and he still thought so. Little shame in that.

“My family was poor and the Church feeds you,” Luís added. He hesitated, then resumed walking. “The odd thing is, now that I’m out, I think I’ve become genuinely religious.”

“Really.” It would’ve taken an ocean to wet the dryness of Adrian’s tone.

Luís looked at him, then turned forward, knowing that his mouth was curved slightly at the corners. “Yes, really. People tell you you’re damned all the time, it’s a little difficult not to start thinking about what it’s like to be damned and to be saved. And what they were really telling you all those years—priests, I mean. Unless they don’t lecture you here…”

“Oh, no, they do. They do.” Then Adrian’s tone changed, growing lighter and more reflective. “Though what’s so bad about being damned? You never see anything useful for this life coming from your tithe, and it doesn’t seem like you’re saved for much, except dying in someone else’s war.”

“Then why do you feel so badly about what happened to your…your…” For some reason Luís couldn’t get his mouth around “village,” though he knew the word and had it in his head. But then he remembered that that hadn’t been what Adrian had said.

And anyway, Adrian was snarling, or choking back one—at any rate, he was making the horse skittish and then he nearly fell off the damn thing because he was shifting about so much. His foot scraped off the stirrup just as Luís turned, and then Luís had a time trying to control the horse and heave Adrian back up.

Somehow Luís managed it. Then he stepped back, trying to catch his breath, and a twinge in the shoulder caught him by surprise. He twisted the joint and the twinge turned into a sharp pain, then dulled to the kind of persistent ache that would linger for days. Luís put up a hand to massage it, but then jerked it away, knowing how useless that would be. Instead he turned his feet forward again, pulled at the horse, and continued down the mountainside.

* * *

Adrian only talked once more before the midday meal, and that was only to stop Luís so he could pick the plant that, though it stung Luís’ nose, allowed the damn horse to stand Adrian. After that he was so silent that Luís had to look back occasionally to be sure that the other man hadn’t fallen off without him noticing. When they needed to turn or stop, Adrian signaled to the horse with his hands and knees, and the horse in turn showed Luís what should be done.

The line Luís had seen did turn out to be a trail, albeit one that clearly hadn’t been used much recently. But a wave of relief still came over Luís as they stepped onto it, and he continued on feeling a little better. His shoulder, however, still continued to bother him, and it was for that as much as for the gnawing in his stomach that made him stop.

He’d found a little more food in the farmhouse, but it wasn’t enough to last more than a day, and Luís was not remotely a good hunter. Still thinking on that, Luís left Adrian and the horse by a scrawny, windblasted tree, and went down to a nearby creek for water.

When he returned, Adrian had one of Luís’ daggers and was just finishing up the gutting of a rabbit with it. The man’s nostrils flared, and then he looked up to see Luís. He paused, several calculations flashing through his eyes, before putting down the dagger and then moving away from it with slow, exaggerated motions.

“Thank you,” Luís eventually said. He took a step forward, glancing around, and then came the rest of the way. Nothing else seemed disturbed, and when he flipped up the flap of a saddlebag, ostensibly to put the cleaned dagger away, he saw that the rope hadn’t been touched; he’d buried it beneath several other items and they didn’t look as if they’d been disturbed.

Then he raised his head, and he almost wasn’t startled to find Adrian very close beside him. His jerk limited itself to putting his hand heavily down into the bag.

“Sorry. I can’t…really help it.” Adrian held his head at a curious angle, so that its top was below the level of Luís’ eyes. He was squatting with his hands hanging between his knees, and he twisted his fingers together before turning up his wrists in a quick, strangely fluid motion. “Would it help?”

“I have no idea,” Luís said honestly. He lifted his hand so that it hovered just over Adrian’s wrists, then pulled it away, putting it down on the ground. Then he took his other hand out of the bag, just as Adrian was turning away, and took one of the man’s wrists.

As soon as he did, Adrian went still. Luís heard the man inhale, but no corresponding exhale as he tugged out Adrian’s arm, then twisted it slightly to catch the light better. He remembered that there had been abrasions, and when he squinted he could still make out a faint roughness here and there, but other than that, the skin was pale and cool and smooth. He shifted on his feet and his thumb moved down one of the tendons in the underside, and it felt a little like the silk used to make robes for the choir.

When he let go, Adrian let out a very soft sigh. Then the man looked up, so that Luís could see his eyes widen as Luís flicked a hair off the man’s brow. Adrian stilled again, stare dark and unreadable, and allowed Luís skate his fingertips around the bruised temple, then the scrapes at the jaw. Then Luís touched the bite on the neck, which of all the injuries still did look as if it was only a few days old, and Adrian twisted his head, his breath hissing over his teeth. He pushed his mouth, which was partly open so it left a trace of warm dampness in its wake, down the inside of Luís’ forearm. Then back, and the whole time he held his neck and head so that Luís’ fingers wouldn’t slip off.

Luís pulled away his hand, knocking lightly at Adrian’s jaw with the knuckles when the man tried to follow. He put his hand on his knee, then off to the side. Then on the saddlebag beside him. “When you do that, are you even thinking about it? Do you—”

“Well, I _want_ it. When I’m doing it. You don’t have to think to want,” Adrian said sharply. Then he dropped his gaze, his shoulders hitching slightly in discomfort. He put his hand over his bandaged arm and began to squeeze at the bicep. “Why do you keep asking?”

“Because I don’t _know_.” After another moment, Luís blew out his breath. He watched Adrian’s head jerk up, frowning, then intercepted the man’s hand when it went towards him. Then he realized Adrian had thought he was getting to his feet. “I am not going to be your…your penance. I’m not even a priest now, for—look. I’m a man. I’m not a cross. I can walk, you don’t need to put me on your back.”

That blankness went across Adrian’s eyes. “Especially when I’m riding the horse?”

Well, the man could be obtuse as well as Luís could, but that hardly meant Luís had to stand for it. He looked at Adrian, then pushed Adrian’s arm down in preparation for standing. Except he stayed on his toes, looking at Adrian’s hand. “You know, I’m sorry too. And I would like to help, if I can, but—not if it crosses what I find right and good. And I don’t believe it’s good if it’s—if it’s not free.”

Luís lifted his head, but Adrian ducked anyway, and came up from beneath to press his mouth against Luís’ mouth. He rocked Luís off his toes and Luís jerked at Adrian’s arm, but his fingers slipped and so Luís snatched out. Though he aimed for the shoulder, he caught the throat and Adrian stiffened. Then his lips flexed against Luís’ mouth as he inhaled sharply, and with a shiver, pulled himself back far enough to push his head past Luís’ cheek.

His mouth stopped just before Luís’ ear, so Luís heard the man lick his lips, then suck at one. “I can’t do anything about it when it happens,” Adrian said after a moment, voice slow and wavering. “But I think about it afterward—it’s like being pushed out of the Church, you start thinking about what you didn’t before and…and I still want it, even when I’m thinking. All right?”

“No. I still have no idea what we’re talking about,” Luís muttered. He lifted his other hand and put it against Adrian’s jaw, stopping the man as he tried to lean back. He held his position for a few seconds, moving his thumb across Adrian’s cheek, and then sighed as he pulled the other man forward.

For all his earlier eagerness, Adrian seemed too shocked to react. His lips were slack as Luís pushed at them with his tongue, the lower one curling back beneath the pressure. Then he rose a little and his lip pushed back; Luís took it as a refusal and lowered his hand, only to catch sharply at Adrian’s shoulder as the other man came forward, his mouth open and warm, his hands dropping to Luís’ knees. They ran up and down Luís’ thighs, grinding down harder and harder as Adrian pressed his suit, nipping and yielding and doing anything that could be done with a willing mouth.

Too hard, Luís thought—he pulled at Adrian’s shoulder, then at the man’s neck. Then he remembered, but Adrian was already slumping, fingernails scratching down Luís’ legs, head straining back as the man tried to keep their mouths joined. He made a gasping, desperate noise and Luís tugged at him again, only meaning to lend some support. But Luís’ hand was still on Adrian’s neck, and Luís kept forgetting, and when he didn’t even know what he was supposed to remember in the first place.

Adrian went slack in his hands, fingers brushing limply down the sides of Luís’ hips, then dragging in the dirt on either side of them. Only his mouth still moved, the lips twitching a little as they stretched towards Luís like a baby bird would towards the meal in its mother’s beak. A moan trickled from it as Luís raised his head—couldn’t be avoided, if they weren’t to both fall—then took the man by the shoulders and hauled him roughly up.

The movement snapped Adrian’s head forward so their brows glanced off each other. The blow stunned Luís for a moment, but did nothing else—but that was enough, as Adrian came abruptly back to life, his hands dropping to grip at Luís’ coat. His mouth latched onto Luís’ again, his tongue darting into Luís’ mouth and then curling away, drawing Luís’ tongue with it like a fish on a line. Luís flexed his fingers over Adrian’s shoulders, then slid his right hand down Adrian’s back, following sensation and not reason. The hide rumpled up between his fingers, then slithered away so his fingertips skated on thin wool, barely enough to retain the heat of the other man.

Then Luís jerked away and brought his hand to his mouth, cursing as the pain in his lower lip sparked. He looked up, then back, and then stopped Adrian by taking the man by the shoulder. “Wait—”

“I’m sorry,” Adrian said, low and frantic. He strained against Luís’ hand, his breath tingling the bitten place on Luís’ lip. “Sorry. I didn’t—”

The damn horse whinnied again, and Adrian’s shoulder flexed sharply against Luís’ palm. Luís instinctively tightened his grip as he looked up again, then behind himself, but he found nothing and so he relaxed. He dropped off his feet and sat down, grimacing as a hard pebble dug into the top of his thigh. “Damn useless piece of horsemeat.”

After a moment, Adrian slackened beneath Luís’ hand and put his head on Luís’ shoulder, laughing quietly. He twisted so his neck slid beneath Luís’ fingers, the bridge of his nose running up against Luís’ collarbone and then rubbing against it, light and persistent, like the stroke of sunshine across the eyes in the morning. “It’s fine. Nothing’s there.”

“Nothing?” Luís muttered, abruptly recalling the past few nights. He pressed his lips together at Adrian’s tense inhale, not quite certain if he’d meant to produce that sort of reaction. Then he sighed again, pushing that away from him. He touched his lip, then took his fingers away to see a few dots of blood on them. “Your teeth…”

“I’m sorry,” Adrian repeated, slower and shakier. He hesitated, then lifted his head and looked at Luís. His lashes dropped, then rose as he leaned forward, his head tipping to the left.

Luís’ lip began to sting again at the pressure, but at the same time, something twisted low in his gut, something he’d thought he’d driven from him, or at least lost—he flinched from it, then stilled himself. But Adrian had already jerked back, his eyes wide and concerned.

“They’re like knives,” Luís finally said. He rolled the lip under and sucked at it, then pushed at Adrian’s shoulder, holding the other man down as he got to his feet.

Pebbles skittered as Adrian turned, some of them bouncing up against Luís’ left heel, but he ignored them and went back over to inspect the rabbit. The meat was dark red, almost a burgundy, and was the freshest thing Luís had seen in a few weeks. His mouth began to water and his stomach yearned in a way that echoed—as distantly but recognizably as the moon’s light did the sun’s, or as man did God—what had stirred a moment before.

“I don’t think we’ve got enough time to cook this now, if that town’s where you say it is. But it’s cold enough to keep till then, and it should make me look more like a hunter.” Luís squatted down and picked up the carcass by the forepaws, then shook it a little to get rid of the dirt. He pulled over the hide and wrapped up the meat in it, securing it by knotting the corners together.

“Hunter?”

A slight flush of heat rose into Luís’ cheeks, but he thought he managed his shrug fluidly enough. “Well, you don’t think I tell people what I’m really doing out here, do you?”

“You didn’t tell me, so no.” Adrian edged up on Luís’ left, keeping a yard between them. He had thrown the hide back over himself, and now took up his portion of the dried meat Luís had laid out.

“I did.” Then Luís turned and went to pack the rabbit in the bags. When he came back, Adrian still hadn’t touched his food and that was when Luís understood the man wasn’t keeping his distance out of wariness, but out of…some sense of propriety, perhaps. It was an odd word to apply to Adrian, but his mannerisms were odd—yet familiar in a way that tugged at Luís’ memory, as if he had learned the reference for them at some point. “I said I was a pilgrim.”

Once Luís picked up his share, Adrian began to eat, and did so with a marked keenness, though the stuff was tough and tasted at best like old leather. He’d finished half his food before Luís had even managed to rip off the second bite from his strip. “But you don’t have faith.”

“I never said—”

“Pilgrims try to prove their faith. You’re looking for it. You didn’t say so, but that’s what I see,” Adrian said. The words were a little incoherent as he was chewing vigorously, but then he swallowed, his shoulders hitching with the force of it, and flicked up his eyes. He watched Luís for a moment, gaze as sharp as his teeth, before ducking away and to the side as he reached for a water-skin. “Anyway, you need a better story, I think. People can’t believe that you’re a hunter. That’s too ridiculous. You don’t even have traps with you.”

Luís opened his mouth, then closed it when he realized he couldn’t untangle his response to the first comment from his response to the second. He rubbed at the side of his face, then glanced reflexively at the sky before he snorted and looked away, over the mountainside. His hand crept up to touch the rosary beads at his neck, and then he shook his head. “Well, what would you suggest?”

* * *

“No, no, nobody’s using it anyway,” the man insisted, pulling Luís along by the shoulder. “It was the room of my grandmother—she died this past winter, God rest her soul.”

Luís finally gave up on resistance and let himself be taken along, ignoring Adrian’s slow amble behind them. The dialect here was difficult to understand and he could only make out about three in five words, so he needed the extra concentration anyway to keep up the conversation about goats and the last skirmish and, oddly, what was going on in Germany. His news of that land was months old, but their host devoured it up as he showed them into the room. When he finally left, it was with the promise of a hot dinner involving that rabbit, and the company of the rest of the village, who apparently were all just as interested.

The village had once been rather sizable, with even a few stone houses fitting for gentry, but the larger part of it looked abandoned, and the people left were all living in houses that had clearly been meant to hold more than their present occupants. Possibly there had been an invalid grandmother, given that the bed was unusually large and fitted with a thick mattress, but Luís had to doubt that she and their host were related.

He also had to smile at the pragmatic cleverness of it, but that fell away in alarm as he turned to see Adrian slumping heavily onto the bed. The other man collapsed onto his face, his arms flopping limply on either side of his head, and then didn’t stir as Luís quickly crossed the space, rattling a loose floorboard. He did begin to lift his head just as Luís reached the bed, but he only turned it towards Luís before putting it back down.

Adrian’s forehead still felt warm, but his skin was dry to the touch. So Luís moved his hand down to the man’s arm, intending to check the wound there, only to have Adrian turn over onto his side. The other man stared tiredly up at Luís, then continued over till he was lying on his back, his boot-heels hooked against the edge of the bed-frame. “It’s fine. I just need to sleep. I…” he frowned, rolling his head from side to side “…damn it…”

Then he twisted over again so he was right beneath the window that fronted the far side of the bed. He heaved up his head, his breath spurting from him in a strained grunt, and put out his hand towards the sill, then jerked it back almost immediately. The recoil made Adrian twist over again and now he was sweating heavily, his eyes closed and his cheeks flushed as if he’d run up the whole mountain. He breathed very slowly and deeply, his brows twitching together. “Listen. Can you—”

Luís was already halfway onto the bed at that point. He paused to glance at Adrian, then stretched over the man and examined the sill, running his fingers into the cracks till he came up with a bundle of dried brown sprigs. It was tied together with a ribbon and he fingered the knot, but after another look at Adrian, Luís pushed away his curiosity and carried away the bunch. He got off the bed and opened another window, careful to catch a few flakes that had crumbled off the stalks, and then dropped the sprigs outside. A light snow had begun to fall and in a few moments it’d coated over the bundle.

Adrian let out a long, relieved sigh, punctuated by a pair of thumps. When Luís turned, he found the man had crawled over to pick up and put straight the boots he’d just kicked off. He went back over and sat down next to Adrian, then folded his hands together. He rubbed his thumbs against each other, then hunched over to push his nose between them. A knot of tension was settling into his head, just behind his eyes.

“Sorry,” Adrian muttered. “I’d be fine, usually.”

Luís dug his thumbnails hard into the corners of his eyes, then withdrew them as tears began to well up. He grimaced and dropped his hands, then began to pull off his heavy coat. It was still a little chilly this far from the main fireplace, but the leather was beginning to feel like iron plate at this point in the day. “That’s not how the story I heard goes.”

“You shouldn’t believe every story you hear.” Head cocked, Adrian pulled up his legs so he could get his weight off the hurt one. He glanced at Luís, his lips ready to smile, but whatever he saw convinced him to instead push up his sleeve and pick at the bandage at his arm. “A lot of terrible things have happened here. Sometimes it’s just easier to make up stories than to think about what was really the matter.”

“I know, but that doesn’t…never mind. I already told them you’re recovering from an illness, so I can just bring back some food if you want to rest,” Luís said, changing his mind. He pulled his coat around and absently flipped it straight, then folded it like he would his old robes. Then he stared at it, uncertain as to whether that was anger or bitterness he tasted in his mouth.

“That’d not look good for your reputation as a doctor, would it?” Adrian replied, tone almost light. But he flinched from Luís’ glance, picking even more nervously at his arm. “No, I’m fine. I should talk to them anyway—they’re not going to tell you anything about Draculea.”

The bandage was slowly coming apart under the other man’s attentions, its twists showing spots of blood that were a bit redder than Luís would’ve liked to see. He reached over, paused, and then took Adrian by the elbow and turned him to look better, ignoring the slight catch of breath. “I’m _not_ a doctor.”

“You know how to clean and stitch a wound properly, and that’s more than they usually see out here.” Adrian put his free hand down on the bed and turned himself towards Luís, his head bent forward. He wiped at his brow, then rubbed his fingers together, idly looking at them. “Look, nobody here’s that badly off. You just take a look, mumble to yourself and tell them your assistant will prepare something for them.”

“I don’t have an—” Luís bit down on the rest. He concentrated on simply clearing the lint from the scabs on Adrian’s arm, finding a little relief in the mindless precision demanded by the task.

On the third plucking, Luís went to flick the bloodied lint onto the floor, only to feel his fingertips collide with something. He looked up, then down at the cupped palm Adrian had used to catch all the bits of lint. The other man stirred a little, making an uncertain sound, but Luís sighed before that could become words.

“I don’t think it looks much better that my _assistant_ instead of my guide is feeling poorly,” Luís finally said. He studied the wounds—made even uglier when he’d cut into them to deliver the paste, but healing well—then released Adrian. His coat was still lying over his knees and it began to slip, so he picked it up and then turned to drape it over the end of the bed.

The creaking floorboard made him look up, only to find that Adrian had already crossed the room and was standing at the table, over the lantern the villager had left. Adrian carefully took off the lantern cover, then dropped in the balls of lint one by one. He stared intently down at the candle inside, apparently watching to ensure that the one ball burned before he introduced another. “They’re going to assume I do both anyway. Nobody hires just a guide. You’re going to pay a man just to walk next to you all day? What happens when you stop walking, and there’s still so much left to do? Then you’re just paying him to sit around.”

“You don’t have the nicest sense of humor.” Luís sat for a moment longer, then got up and went across the room to his bags. He flipped open the flap of the one carrying his few personal items, including the sealed packet that was responsible for sending him to this country, then removed those for safekeeping. He knew he wouldn’t be able to sit up the entire night, and though the villagers seemed welcoming enough, he knew better by now to depend on goodwill to defeat human nature.

“And you don’t seem to have one,” Adrian absently replied. Then he jerked up his head, suddenly as stiff and wary as a beaten dog watching its master approach. He relaxed when he realized that Luís wasn’t even turned his way, but then frowned and came over, putting out his hand as Luís tried to lift the mattress. “What are you doing? Don’t put that there. Everyone hides things there—”

His wrist jerked, then held still as they looked at it and at Luís’ fingers wrapped around it. Adrian drew in a slow, deep breath, his fingers curling back towards him. He began to speak and Luís raised his head, but his eye was caught by the gashes on Adrian’s arm, which were still unbandaged. He dropped his armful on the bed, then put his hand under Adrian’s elbow, straightening out the limb for a better look. The movement made Adrian’s rolled-up sleeve slide and Luís snagged the falling cloth with his fingertips, then pushed it back up onto the man’s shoulder. Then he let his hand run higher, over the shoulder to the neck; Adrian hissed but stayed as still as a statue.

Luís skated around that spot, letting his fingers drift higher. He touched the point of the cheekbone, then framed the curve of that bone with his fingertips. When Adrian moved his head, Luís had to adjust his fingers, and then to lay them flat against Adrian’s cheek in order to keep them on the man’s face.

Adrian paused briefly, then finished the turn of his head so it rested on Luís’ shoulder. After a moment, his hands settled lightly at Luís’ waist. “I have to be something,” he murmured. “I’m staying with you. So if you don’t want me…and I thought you didn’t…”

“I don’t think I could introduce you as my bedmate and get such comfortable lodgings,” Luís replied. He moved his hand so it was cupping the back of Adrian’s head and not bending his wrist so sharply, then stooped to get at the bed, where the last of the bandages was lying looped over the packet.

Then he straightened, but Adrian was chuckling into his neck and so Luís didn’t immediately attend to the man’s arm. Instead he flicked the strip a few times to have it lying straight, with no twists; he felt both resigned and strangely nervous, as if he was walking into a great, unknown hall. As if he hadn’t long since familiarized himself with that experience.

“Do I have to tell you not to give me the bed?” Adrian’s voice brimmed with warm amusement. His breath teased the hairs at Luís’ nape as he held out his arm for Luís, and then, as Luís pinned down the strip’s end to the man’s bicep, Adrian’s mouth just grazed the skin below Luís’ ear. “They’d find that odder, if you slept on the floor. Winters are freezing and it’s a poor country. Only the rich and the selfish don’t share.”

“Well, I’m neither.” The flesh was hardly swollen now, so Luís made quick work of the bandaging. He did slow once, when Adrian’s lips moved over his earlobe, but otherwise he ignored the other man. When he was done he stepped back from Adrian; the hands at his waist clung for a moment, then fell away. Luís turned before the other man raised his head. “Just don’t make it any more complicated, please. I don’t like lying, and I’m not much better at holding back the truth.”

Adrian took a step to the side, but then stopped. The fragment of leg that was still in Luís’ sight pivoted about halfway around. “If the floorboard creaks, it should come up easily enough. And the creaking would wake me, if we have visitors tonight.”

When Luís looked up, Adrian was across the room again, pulling the sleeve down his arm as he pulled at a window shutter. The man’s tone had been a little sharp, and the way he kept himself turned from Luís spoke eloquently of disappointment—and for a moment Luís’ chest felt tight. But then he finished the breath, and bent down to tug at the end of the board.

* * *

The village offered up nothing more serious than a broken toe and a few dirty cuts, all of which Luís’ limited medical skills could easily dispose. Its people’s curiosity was a little more difficult to handle, but eventually they let him retire.

Adrian stayed behind, looking much more improved than in the morning. His looks had garnered him a good bit of admiration from the womenfolk, and he was apparently an entertaining conversationalist as well, since the group that clustered around his animated face and laughing eyes included men and children. The odd pang that struck Luís then was of course instantly identifiable, but Luís pushed it away till he got back to his room.

Then he got down on his knees and prayed as he hadn’t done in several weeks. The rough countryside hadn’t been conducive to kneeling, but it hadn’t been mere pride on his part. As he was reminded now, banging his head against the bedframe while the darkness remained pointedly silent to him. The beads of his rosary bit harder and harder into his palms, till finally he unclenched his hands from around them and felt a warm, wet spot at the base of his thumb. When he touched his tongue to it, he tasted blood.

Luís stood there for probably several minutes, his hand made into a fist again, and the bitter anger rose, crested, and then fell away as he stared about the dim room. His eyes noticed things, like the half-carved end of one windowsill, and his nose smelled the stew from dinner, and he heard the muffled talk in the next room. He couldn’t help but be distracted by such things, however much he tried to concentrate, and he knew now that that distraction would forever be his downfall. He had faith of a kind, but it was not the sort that it should have been, or that least he’d been told it should be. His calling—if he had one these days—had no heavenly source, no angelic command behind it, but was rooted in the things of the earth. Of man and this world, and so Luís would never have the certainty of knowing what he did was, in fact, right in the eyes of God. He’d only know if it was right in his eyes, and his judgment was far from infallible.

Though he hadn’t yet brought himself to accept that realization. He struggled for a while, raising a few sparks as he thought about what he’d had to leave and whether he’d have had to go if he’d lived more—conservatively, but they inevitably fluttered off into the dark as soon as he took his mind from them. And there they died out of neglect instead of in peace.

A dry chuckle slipped from Luís. He stopped it as soon as he heard it echoing about, but then sighed and let out a softer, drier one. He did have a sense of humor, he thought as he began to prepare for bed. He didn’t like it much either, but it was as stubborn as Adrian.

The wind did come through the walls, but the bed came with both heavy wool-filled blankets and a thick hide that Luís thought was bear fur. Beneath all the layers, he quickly found himself warm and then overheated, so he sat up again and stripped off his trousers, then rid of himself of everything except his undershirt. He put his clothes on a dresser that footed the bed, then got back under the blankets. And a little touch of civilization did wonders, Luís soon found. As tired as he’d been, for the past few days he’d had difficulty dozing off simply because of what he feared would be in his dreams. But here he found his eyes drifting shut almost as soon as his head touched the mattress. He fought the slide for several moments out of habit, but then caught himself and breathed in and out a few times, forcing himself to relax. The voices in the next room faded.

Then Luís’ eyes snapped open. Every muscle in his body had tensed, and moisture was dotting his brow once again, but it was an icy sweat. He pressed his palm against the mattress, acutely aware of how far he had to move in order to turn towards the wall. And he knew that he was inside, and several people were well within calling distance, but he still couldn’t bring himself to face that wolf-howl.

Which was ridiculous, he reminded himself. He was safe, and the cry was nothing that he hadn’t heard before. It wasn’t even close, and any moment now it would come again to prove him right.

Except instead the door opened. On the verge of pushing himself up, Luís stilled again, his breath drying up in his throat. He had buried himself beneath the blankets due to the chilly drafts, so now his sight was restricted to a sliver of the room, which did not include the door. Whoever it was remained on the threshold for several seconds, long enough for Luís to have to breathe, before slowly coming into view. They moved so silently that the sound of the door shutting almost made Luís fling himself up. Instead he sank his fingers into the mattress.

The wolf did howl again and the other person stopped, inhaling sharply. They stood there for a while and Luís was just beginning to think that they were as nervous as he was when something white swung over their legs. An over-shirt, and that along with a pair of trousers quickly made its way onto a shelf. Then Luís found himself staring at empty boots.

He understood what had happened just as the blankets were pulled back from him. Luís sucked in his breath and the silhouette before him jerked back, then cursed as they grabbed the bedframe for balance. Then Adrian blew out his breath, shaking his head, and climbed onto the mattress. “You startled me. What are you doing?”

“I have no idea,” Luís mumbled after a moment. He laid dumbly till Adrian’s arm bumped him, then belatedly pushed himself back to make room. “Sorry.”

Adrian glanced at him, or at least seemed to glance at him—the room was too dark for details—before sliding his legs beneath the blankets. He started on his side, but then turned onto his back, a pained grunt issuing from him. His cold toes brushed down the side of Luís’ calf and Luís flinched, then flopped back in a spasm of relief so abrupt that it hurt.

The other man looked over again at Luís’ half-stifled curse, then settled down with his back to the headboard. He pulled up the blankets to his waist, then pushed his arms beneath them. “Did I wake you?”

“No. No, I heard the—the wolf.” Luís winced a second time at his slight stutter. He was fully awake now, and in control of himself, and so he knew how absurd his reactions had been a moment ago. Though if he was completely honest with himself, a small part of him remained irrationally frightened. “How was it after I left?”

“They think you’re very nice, even though your speaking is bad,” Adrian said after a moment. His tone was flatter than he probably intended, given the way he wrapped his arms around himself directly afterward. He rubbed his hands up and down his upper arms a few times. “Draculea’s heading for Bucharest, so far as anyone knows. Which is not a lot, since everyone hates him now and he has to keep moving, but it’s as good as anywhere else to find him.”

“Oh.” Bucharest was at least a week away—no, longer at their current rate. They only had the one horse, and winter had taken hold. The weather would be terrible.

The bed suddenly rocked as Adrian let out a violent shiver. His hands made soft slapping noises as he wrapped his arms around himself more tightly, exhaling sharply again. From the angle of his head, it seemed as if he was looking at the window over the bed, and a moment later another wolf’s cry did come from that direction.

Luís flinched, then reprimanded himself for repeating a mistake; he might not know what it was he confronted, but at least he knew how he’d confronted it before and whether or not that had gone well. He pushed himself over onto his arm as Adrian began to speak again, but the other man fell silent when he realized Luís was moving. Adrian’s hand moved, its fingers rippling, but then settled back before Luís could fully make out the motion. He tipped his head to watch Luís, the weak light catching the gleam of his eyes and little else.

No green glow, Luís thought. A part of him started to laugh derisively at the thought, but another, larger part of him smothered that laugh. He wavered for a moment, trying to find his way through the conflict, before putting out his hand and cupping the nearest of Adrian’s shoulders. It stiffened under his palm, then rolled slightly. Then the other man slunk down the headboard and beneath the sheets as swiftly and seamlessly as a pebble sinking into a pond. He took Luís’ hand with him, so Luís dropped roughly back onto his elbow, then had to lift his hand free to avoid further losing his balance.

Adrian slowed at that, but then slid forward as Luís reached across him and pulled up the blankets, till they were over both their heads. His hands brushed up against Luís’ chest and resting arm, then pulled away. Then he pushed his head forward so his breath gusted over Luís’ face. He seemed willing to stop there, but when Luís swung an arm over his waist and tugged, Adrian came quickly enough.

Then he stopped, apparently realizing what he was doing. His hands were trapped against Luís’ chest, half-curled with the knuckles facing out so Luís could feel them flex. “I can take you there. I know the city, and I think he has to go there sooner or later,” he mumbled. “It’s a straightforward…”

“You’re not as well as you’ve been making out.” Luís frowned and pushed up the back of Adrian’s shirt, feeling at the too-warm flush of the man’s skin. He listened to the exhausted edge in the man’s startled gasp, then belatedly remembered his manners.

But as he was pulling out his hand, a hard grip snapped about his wrist. Then it let go and Adrian ducked his head, inadvertently cracking their brows together. They both cursed, Adrian dropping further back. Then he tried to start again about Bucharest, but his words dried up when Luís took him by the back of the head and held him still. He breathed slowly a few times, letting Luís feel over his forehead and cheek. “I’m just tired. You know, I’ve been—”

“Feverish for a few days, and then remarkably improved,” Luís muttered. He tightened his fingers over Adrian’s ear, then put up his other hand to complete the framing of the man’s face.

Adrian was completely silent for a few seconds, not even breathing. Then he let out a long, almost exasperated sigh, turning his head towards the mattress. “Do you want to talk about that now?”

“Not really.” Luís felt the man start and loosened his hands enough for that to not pain Adrian, but not enough for him to slip free. He took a half-breath himself and ran his tongue over his lip, then pushed himself over his arm, so their noses just whispered over each other. “Are you all right?”

“I can do what I have to,” Adrian said after a moment, voice toneless with frustration. “You heal fast here. You don’t, you die. You live, then you have to get up again and go on. It’s enough, so why are you asking?”

“Well, because I’d like to know you’re all right.” A little irritation crept into Luís’ tone and more flared up in him when he heard it. He began to shake his head, but stopped when Adrian started to pull against his hands. “I want to know you’re fine. I’m not a doctor and I can’t just tell from looking at you. If I could even see you, it’s so dark in here.”

The blankets between them rippled as Adrian pushed up his hands. His knuckles bumped the undersides of Luís’ arms, and then he followed those up till he was loosely holding Luís’ wrists. “Then I’m all—”

“I’m not good at this. I told you, the last time I didn’t notice till she was dead and—” Luís sucked the rest of it back into his mouth, both appalled and relieved at his carelessness.

His fingers slackened due to his lack of attention, but just as they would have slipped off Adrian’s jaw, Adrian pushed them back up. Then he covered Luís’ hands with his own—his palms were very warm against Luís’ icy fingers—and held them there as he edged forward, his nose running up against and then sliding by Luís’ own.

“I’m not her,” Adrian said. His lips just touched Luís’ mouth with the last word before vanishing into the dark again. “I don’t know what happened, but I’m not expecting you to be a doctor, or a priest, or even a pilgrim. I know you’re not any of those anyway.”

“I’m supposed to be. I’m supposed to—”

“Why?” Adrian’s mouth brushed over Luís’ again, warm and soft. “Why? You’re supposed to be because she asked you, as a dying wish? You’re supposed to be because you’re ordered to be?”

Luís drew in a sharp breath through his nose, his lips sealed tight. He held it within him, foolishly thinking that perhaps it’d force some better thinking from him, but in the end he exhaled and was none the wiser. What he’d known before was what he knew now, and—and he exhaled again, shaking his head in frustration. “No. No, but I should—I shouldn’t think that I…God, I don’t know. All right?”

Something grazed the side of Luís’ face: Adrian’s hand, caressing it like Luís’ mother had once did, when she was calming him. Forgiving him.

“All right,” Adrian said softly, and cupped his jaw and kissed him.

Luís sucked in his breath and Adrian seemed pulled along with it, rolling heavily into him so Luís instinctively seized the man’s shoulders. Then his hands seemed to fail him, too distracted by the warmth and the slope of those shoulders, the curves as they turned into a leanly muscled back that arched beneath his touch. He choked back a groan as Adrian’s tongue flicked teasingly into his mouth, then along his lower lip; his hands slipped lower, cloth bunching awkwardly up between his fingers till suddenly he was out of cloth, and his hands laid on bare soft skin.

Adrian arched again, inviting Luís’ palms to drop around the round of his buttocks. He put one arm around Luís’ neck and pulled himself up against Luís, his knees pressing at Luís’ thighs till one managed to slip between them and push up the tails of Luís’ shirt. His mouth fell open under slight pressure, and Luís tasted him, tasted the heat inside. And the taste was enough, and then it wasn’t: Luís had his fingers digging into the backs of the other man’s thighs before he knew it, pressing them together, and then when he did, he didn’t care. He dug harder, driving his tongue as deeply as possible into Adrian’s mouth, needing more.

The blankets dragged at him, so heavy that they forced his head back before he wrenched himself free of them and rolled over onto Adrian. Some particle of sense kept him on his elbows and knees, those joints splayed as widely as his balance would allow so their bodies remained together, but without his full weight coming to bear on the other man. His hands went back to Adrian’s shoulders, then tangled up in the man’s arms as Adrian tried to lift them. The confusion got in the way of Adrian’s mouth, and finally Luís just pinned Adrian’s elbows as he sucked on Adrian’s lower lip. He registered a grunt and moved his one hand down so it wasn’t on the bandage, but that was as far as his sense of consideration managed to penetrate.

A knee thumped into his thigh, then ground its way across it to slide free at the side, and suddenly there was extra space between them. Luís lost his hold on one elbow as he bent to close that space, his hand skidding up beneath Adrian’s arm. His mouth slid to the side as Adrian twisted, then settled again just under Adrian’s jaw, drawing a sharp hiss from the other man. A flutter of a chill went through him, but then Adrian bit his shoulder, the man’s moan vibrating against Luís’ flesh, and a blanket of heat swept down Luís from shoulder to hips.

He pulled down his hand, then pushed it between them, trying to push away the shirt-tails without groaning too loudly at the teasing grazes of flesh he encountered between the folds. Once he touched something and Adrian bucked hard, thigh ramming lengthwise up against Luís’ leg, and when Luís pushed down on the man’s belly, he felt a stickiness between his fingers and Adrian’s skin. His mouth drifted lower on Adrian’s throat and Adrian pulled at the bedcoverings so the edge of the bearhide slapped against the back of Luís’ neck. It was heavy enough to stun slightly, and as Luís lifted his head in surprise, Adrian let out a stuttering gasp.

It touched a memory, nearly allowed that to go free, and then hooked it and brought it back. Luís blinked hard, staring at the shadowy face beneath him. He suddenly felt the sweat on his face, the damp shirt clinging to his chest, the chilly air of the room seeping beneath the blankets.

Adrian made an impatient noise, pushing his knees into the sides of Luís’ legs. Then he raised his head a little, apparently looking harder. He kept it up for a moment, then dropped back with a whisper that might’ve been the mattress crushing beneath his head, or another tired sigh. His eyes gleamed in the dark, then disappeared as he stretched back his chin. “Please.”

A shiver slipped down Luís’ back. He bit his lip, then sucked the spot of blood from it.

“Please,” Adrian repeated, softer but harsher. He jerked back his head, then twisted it to the side. “Please, damn it, I _want_ you to—”

Luís pressed at Adrian’s belly, feeling the muscles run against his palm. He bent, stopped, and then put his mouth against Adrian’s neck.

The other man almost threw him off, so violent was Adrian’s response. Adrian’s gasp ended in a muffled choke as he jammed the bearhide into his mouth, his throat jerking against Luís’ teeth. His knee bashed into Luís’ thigh, then pulled away as he put up his arms and raked his nails down Luís’ back. He knotted them together, trapping Luís’ hand between their bodies, turning its fingers into mere pressure as his writhing rubbed away the intervening cloth to leave only the rough slide of flesh against flesh. Luís resisted it for a while, trying to keep his head, but eventually it wore him away as well, and then the flesh was all that was left.

* * *

“Good that I took the extra shirts from that farmhouse,” Luís muttered, climbing back into bed. A yawn caught him and he stopped, his balance momentarily wavering with fatigue. Then he shouldered up the bearhide and dropped under it, his eyes already closing.

The other side of the bed creaked as Adrian followed him, reminding Luís that there was more to it than clean clothing. But when he reached over, the other man knocked away his hand. Adrian bent down and studied the bedding closely—he almost seemed to sniff it at points—before flopping over it and pulling up the blankets. “It’s all right. They won’t notice anything in the morning, and they’re sleeping like the dead now.”

Some sort of noise caught in Luís’ throat, then withered away before he knew if it was grey laughter or something darker. He turned onto his back and stared at the ceiling, then closed his eyes as Adrian’s breath dampened his shoulder. “Well, thank you to the dead.”

Adrian breathed slowly, calmly. His hand touched Luís’ side, then disappeared, only to find itself a place curled high over Luís’ ribs as he settled his chin against the top of Luís’ shoulder. “You should show them some respect, at least. Though it’s no good listening to them.”

“My…” The word dropped from Luís’ lips before he’d completely thought things out. He listened to the sound fade, but the meaning still remained no matter how tightly he shut his eyes, and so finally he finished the thought. “She told me something, the last time I saw her. She knew she was dying, but she said—not to pray for her. Because when she met with God, she would tell him that we had been husband and wife in her eyes, and to her that justified everything.”

“She sounds sensible. She’d see Him first,” Adrian said after a moment. His fingers pressed at Luís’ rib. “I mean that—I would like such a woman, is what I mean.”

Luís glanced at him, or where he felt the weight of Adrian’s head was. Then he turned back, the corners of his mouth curling slightly upward. It pained him a little. “I keep thinking I should pray for her anyway. She deserved prayer, at the very least. But when I try, it doesn’t…”

“If she asked for you not to, then you do worse by insisting.” Adrian sucked in his breath at the end, but the silence wore on without any retraction from him. He moved slightly, nervously plucking at Luís’ shirt. “She was alive when she said that, wasn’t she? Then you should listen. It’s too late when she’s dead.”

“Well, of course—”

“I had a wife. And a son.” After a moment, Adrian pushed his head up Luís’ shoulder and into the crook of Luís’ neck. When Luís turned in surprise, the other man only pressed closer, his breath a little stuttered now. He flinched as Luís touched his arm, then abruptly slackened against Luís, one hand twisted up in the front of Luís’ shirt. “Listen. You have them only when they’re living. Leave them alone when they’re gone. You can’t care for them anymore, and when you can’t then you have to stop. Or else you become something else, something that doesn’t really love them. They just turn into an excuse.”

Luís parted his lips, but didn’t answer. He worked his arm around and put his hand to Adrian’s cheek, and Adrian shivered sharply before rubbing his face harder against Luís’ neck. So Luís slid his hand around the back of the man’s head, and Adrian went stiff, then slumped into Luís. His shoulders shook and a hot dampness began to spread over Luís’ shoulder. It only grew broader when Luís put his other arm around Adrian’s waist, but the shaking seemed to lessen a little.

“You’re so young,” Luís said a while later. Softly, the surprise still with him.

Adrian chuckled through a tight throat, the sound tinged with wetness. “I’m older than you, I think.”

The correction sprang to Luís’ lips, but after a moment he swallowed it. His mouth grazed over Adrian’s temple as he shut his eyes.

* * *

In the morning the entire village saw them off, so Luís had to let Adrian walk, given that they’d seen him moving about well enough the night before. The other man carried his head high, but once they were far enough away, he made no protest about getting onto the horse. He was healing well, his limp almost gone, but the effort put into that continued to show in the easy way he lost his breath and the perpetual tinge of grey about his mouth.

The trail out of the village was rough but distinct enough for Luís to not need to consult with Adrian very often, and so only about two hours later, Luís looked back to find Adrian’s hand dangling down by the stirrups, the horse’s mane softly fluttering with every slow breath the sleeping man took. A spark of irritation rose and died in Luís’ chest; he fiddled with the reins for a few seconds, then simply adjusted to walk a pace further back, with his hand on Adrian’s shoulder to keep the other man from falling. He went on several steps, watching the ground carefully till he was certain that he had continued on the trail proper. Then he sighed and looked up and about, squinting against the stiff breeze. After another pace, he reached down, grasped Adrian’s wrist as it bumped against his thigh, and tucked the man’s arm up around the saddlehorn.

Adrian slept most of the day, only half-waking when Luís pulled him out of the saddle for the midday rest. He ate—messily because his eyes never fully opened—allowed Luís to wipe his mouth, and then quietly slumped over Luís’ legs as Luís twisted around to clean off his hands on the grass. Luís’ sigh this time was interrupted by the growling of his stomach, and in the end he didn’t move the other man. He simply picked up his meal and ate over one hand that was cupped to keep any stray droppings from showering the other man.

The next village was lower on the mountain, and large enough to have a church, whose steeple Luís had just glimpsed when Adrian truly woke. In doing so, he startled both Luís and the horse, for he seemed to have no in-between state of muttering and twitching, but was limp the one moment and then upright and fully aware the next.

“Shh,” Adrian shushed, looking at the skittish horse. He held his hand over its neck, then abruptly dropped it to grab at the pommel and dismount before Luís had time to stop the beast.

“If anything, that scared it more,” Luís muttered. He would’ve added a tarter comment, but at that moment he thought he’d seen movement in the trees to the left.

Adrian glanced across the saddle at him, then caused the horse to halt by walking in front of it. He cupped his hands around his mouth and called out, and after an uneasy moment, a man warily stepped from the grove ahead of them.

A doctor was just as welcome at this village as he’d been at the last, though when Luís found himself confronted with a gravely sick child, he almost found himself wishing that the villagers had chased them off. He knew just enough to know what was the matter with her, and that he could do nothing about it except make her marginally more comfortable. When he consulted with Adrian, hoping desperately that the man could produce some miraculous folk remedy, he received no encouraging answer.

So he told the parents so, framing it in the gentlest terms his bad Romanian could manage. Adrian was trying to translate beside him, but Luís knew the parents would only be half-listening to anything, and so would barely realize he was speaking, let alone pay close attention to anything Adrian said.

“They took that well,” Luís said a long time later. After dinner, after they’d been shown to a makeshift guest quarters in the loft above their horse’s stall. He leaned against a beam and scuffed his toe through the straw, looking instinctively away when something small and dark scurried away from him. He grimaced and absently rubbed at his head, which was beginning to itch with at least accumulated dirt. Then he grimaced again, castigating himself for the vanity. “Better than I would’ve.”

A hank of hay flew past Luís. He watched it go, then looked up just as Adrian squatted down to spread a hide and several blankets over the evened-out straw. “If it’s the child’s time, then nothing can be done about it. God wants you back, and it’s better that you go to him than stay here.”

Luís realized he was pulling at his neck and moved his hand to his shoulder, away from his rosary. He tugged at the joint, then turned and picked up their saddlebags, intending to mound those up as pillows. “In Milan they would say that God only wants you back because man can’t do enough yet. It’s man’s fault he’s not strong enough.”

Adrian half-turned his head without quite looking up, his hands continuing to smooth over the blankets. He moved onto them on his knees, crushing the hay so its earthy fragrance filled the small space. It was still quite fresh, and carried a note of grassiness. “That’s just what they think here, with what they know.”

“Is it what you think?” Luís asked sharply. Then he opened his mouth to apologize, but after a third thought, he reluctantly refrained. His temper had spurred it from him, but his curiosity about Adrian was hardly rooted in mere spite.

“Is what you said what you think?” The reply came immediately, but so low beneath Adrian’s breath that Luís could barely make out the words. Adrian’s shoulders hitched, then stiffened while still high. His hands stilled, then clenched and unclenched at the blanket beneath them. Then he shook his head and leaned forward on his hands as he wriggled his feet out of his boots. “I don’t know about God,” he sighed. “I don’t know about death. I don’t think I need to waste my time thinking about them—so much else can happen first, that’s how I think and they think. And anyway, God and death can take care of themselves, you know.”

A curl of guilt wrapped itself about Luís’ chest and squeezed a little. He took a short, slow breath before turning around. After a moment’s pause, he sat down on the edge of the pallet and began to take off his own boots. “I’m sorry. It’s just she’s the same age as my daughter, if—”

The rustlings beside him stopped, then hesitantly began again after several moments of silence had passed between them. “…she’d lived?”

“I don’t know,” Luís said. He stared at the edge of the loft. “I don’t know if she’s dead or not. I had to leave—to run, to be honest. She stayed with her mother, but her mother’s dead and that bastard she married wouldn’t have concerned himself much with—with a girl in any case. With one who wasn’t his own blood even less.”

He stiffened at the touch on his shoulder, remaining as he was. After a moment, a low exhale just tickled his back. Then came the sounds of rustling cloth and crackling hay, which peaked quickly before dropping into silence. A nudge at Luís’ hip made him look down, but it was only Adrian’s blanket-covered foot stretching out. Then the light dimmed as Adrian shut the lantern hanging above them.

The world went dark, then gradually returned in varying shades of black as Luís’ eyes adjusted to the night. He glanced down once as their horse moved about in its stall, then put up his hand. Luís rubbed his neck a few times, then slipped his fingers beneath his rosary and pulled it out of his shirt. He wrapped the beads around his hand, letting a few click through his forefinger and thumb, and then leaned forward to put his other hand down on the straw.

For a long time Luís remained hunched over, the stalks of hay cutting into his palm. The stable was far from weatherproof and the occasional bitter wind whipped through the cracks, but a trickle of sweat formed at his temple, then sent a drop across his cheekbone and down the side of his nose. It stopped when it was poised on the verge of detaching from his nostril, then lingered till that damn drop seemed to be every single—Luís jerked up a hand and roughly wiped it away.

The rosary beads rattled as they scratched his face, causing him to wince. He pulled them off, stared at them and then put them back around his neck. He moved abruptly and he thought he felt his shirt tear a little at the careless treatment, but Luís paid no attention to it as he twisted about and crawled under the blankets. His hand bumped into Adrian’s knee and it slid away, and Luís changed his angle as well, only to collide with Adrian’s elbow. He cursed, dimly hearing the other man’s apology, then shrugged away Adrian’s hand and laid down.

And he tried to settle down then, but straw made for a lumpy bed and finally Luís put back a hand to try and flatten some of those clumps out. He managed to smooth over about half, then found that if he rolled onto his side, the remaining ones weren’t nearly as uncomfortable. Though then he was facing into irregular puffs of warm breath, and Luís had to swallow a last surge of irritation at them. “You’re too quiet. It’s like having a corpse around sometimes—damn it, I’m still upset. I—is that an insult around here?”

“It depends on who you’re talking to,” Adrian said after a moment, too low for Luís to read his tone. His hand brushed up against Luís’ arm, then returned to gingerly follow it for several inches. Then he hissed a little as Luís took his wrist, but he was sliding over before Luís had fully twisted his own arm about to be able to tug at the other man.

Adrian’s nose bumped into the front of Luís’ shoulder and his hair tickled the underside of Luís’ chin so Luís lifted that, expecting the other man to push up. Instead Adrian seemed content to have his head tucked under, putting his arm up over Luís’ side and then pressing back when Luís cupped one of his shoulderblades. He sighed when Luís’ fingertips drifted off cloth and onto skin, then arched his neck a little when Luís moved his fingers back to the man’s shoulder.

“I don’t mind, but I wouldn’t say it to somebody you didn’t know,” Adrian added. He was closer so Luís could hear him better, but the sudden warmth in his tone wasn’t only due to that. “I’m trying to stay where you can see me. I can’t really do anything about how quiet I move. It’s—”

“Habit?” Fighting since twelve, Luís belatedly remembered.

After a moment, Adrian nodded. He seemed uncomfortable and shifted almost in the same moment, his knees rasping along Luís’ shins, but when Luís loosened his grip, the other man froze. Then he pushed even closer, a slight tremor going through him. His nails scratched a little at Luís’ side. “I don’t think like that—I didn’t think like that. I thought like you, that people could change things. If they worked hard enough, went far enough…I had to leave.”

“Rest of your village didn’t agree with you?” Luís asked. He dropped his hand to Adrian’s bicep, in case the man had a reaction as bad as the other times the subject had come up. “My bishop, he didn’t believe in doing more than the ritual. But the things people say in confession—I couldn’t understand how you could care for your flock by doing nothing about—”

“Oh, no, no,” Adrian muttered. It didn’t seem as if he’d really heard Luís’ hastily-added explanation, since he shook his head, then pushed his brow into Luís’ shoulder. He took a deep, slow breath, so that Luís ceased his babbling to pay closer attention, then relaxed so abruptly that Luís instinctively tightened his grip on the man. “No—I was talking about my wife. The others, same problem, but not so bad. They still wanted to talk—she only wanted me to stop it. She didn’t think it was a good idea, trying to fight. She didn’t think most of what I thought were good ideas…I don’t know, I think we were both very young to be married.”

Then he paused, but it was the sort of strained, reluctant halt that would fester if left alone, holding back the poison that needed to come out. But at the same time Adrian had begun to shake again, his breath growing ragged. He stilled when Luís pulled at him, then sank his face into Luís’ neck with a relieved noise that might’ve been a whimper if it hadn’t been muffled. His shuddering diminished a little as Luís rubbed his back and shoulders.

“She said she’d leave if I didn’t, and I didn’t know where she’d go—she would’ve taken my son, too. If I left, then at least I knew where to go when I could get him back.” Adrian laughed, quiet but jagged and hard. “But they died before I could. That’s when I changed my mind, and thought you can’t change things so why bother? But—but I was wrong about that. You let it go, it’s not any better. People still are hurt, and I _could_ have been there.”

“But you don’t know how it would’ve gone,” Luís muttered. He shook his head at the protest Adrian began, then squeezed Adrian’s shoulders. “No, it’s true. You’re one person, you’re not God. You could have been there, but you don’t know what that would have changed.”

“But _something_ would have,” Adrian insisted, lifting his head. His words hissed out against Luís’ face, so sharp that Luís caught himself flinching, but then Adrian snorted. Then snorted again, and put his head back on Luís’ shoulder. He shivered once more before going still. “Maybe it’d be that I’d be dead now, instead of alive. Maybe that’s the unfair part.”

Luís opened his mouth, but then let his head fall back against the pallet instead of answering. He stared at the blackness around them, absently blinking when something below nickered. “I don’t like to think that death is ever fair. If it’s not for your loved ones, then I don’t see how it’s any better for you.”

“Well, you think you can change that sort—”

“No,” Luís said sharply. He paused, trying to collect his thoughts. His hands moved up and down Adrian’s shoulders. “No…I don’t think I can change death. I’m not insane yet—that surprises me, actually, but I’m not. But what I don’t…what I don’t understand, is that other people think they can. You can work for what you think is good, but when you die, the priest has to bar you from the graveyard because you didn’t follow a rule that I think causes _harm_. And harm is evil. God should want you to reduce it, not increase it.”

Adrian was quiet for several moments, his breath slowing so much that Luís almost thought he’d fallen asleep. But then he lifted his head so the tips of his hair swept across Luís’ mouth, a little like the brush of a cat’s tail. “You know, priests are just men. When God leaves them, and you can’t know—”

“What did you do exactly?” The darkness was bearable but not the truth, Luís thought with wry savagery. Then he continued, before Adrian could speak. “To get your village—”

“Oh. I—I—” Adrian didn’t need the breath to finish, but he sounded slightly better for having taken it “—lost my head. Someone came to tell me about my wife, and—and I thought they could’ve done more. For me, not her. I was selfish—I thought they knew what I wanted, and they could’ve helped for my sake. When they didn’t, I…there was going to be fighting near them, and I knew about it but I went drinking instead.”

He stuttered a little there and Luís pushed up one hand to cradle the back of Adrian’s head, supporting it as Adrian buried his face in the crook of Luís’ neck for a few moments. A little bit of dampness began to seep into Luís’ collar, but then Adrian pulled back, shaking his head when Luís initially resisted.

“I should’ve gone back. I had some of them with me, following me, and they didn’t know because I didn’t tell them. I—I don’t think I really wanted anything to happen, I really don’t,” Adrian said, the words coming in a rush now. His fingers curled tight against Luís’ side and chest. “It’s not easy to find and I thought the armies would miss it, so maybe a scare, at most, and finally I sobered up and told them, and we went—but we were a day late, because I’d been passed out in a tavern. And it was—my men turned on me. They knew what’d happened when we saw it, they knew what I’d done and they drove me out. Good for—for them.”

The last word was so horribly mangled that Luís filled it in from context, not from actual hearing. By then he’d realized that Adrian was speaking of very recent events, and given the way they’d met, possibly was speaking about them for the first time. So he expected it when Adrian abruptly collapsed against him, shaking again. For once the man made a little noise, but to be honest Luís would’ve taken the silence over those raw, soft sounds.

Luís moved back a few inches, taking more of Adrian’s weight onto him so he could get his other arm fully around the man. He didn’t hold the man so tightly that Adrian couldn’t shift about as he wanted, but he didn’t allow Adrian to slip away either, though a few times Adrian made it clear that that would’ve been what he preferred. But when pressed, the man always ceded to Luís, and eventually he was clinging to Luís, dragging his nose back and forth across the top of Luís’ shoulder. Then he made a chagrined sound and patted at the spot with his hand.

“It’s not my shirt anyway,” Luís said. He felt his lips twitch at the thin chuckle Adrian let out, then pressed them till he was certain they’d stay flat. Then he pulled at Adrian, and when the other man leaned forward, pressed his cheek to the top of Adrian’s head. “Did you know that that would happen if you didn’t go back?”

Adrian stiffened. Then he tried to push away. “I—”

“Did you?”

“…No. No, but the armies, they were close and I—”

“So you didn’t know.” Luís nicked his lip on his tooth as Adrian continued to twist, then finally gave the man a shake. “ _Stop_ that. You didn’t know. It’s still a bad thing you did—maybe even horrible, because I only know what you’ve told me. But you didn’t know and when you did, you grieved just like they did. You still are grieving. There’s a difference between doing wrong and accepting wrong. And I _am_ just as much of a man as you are, but anyway, I could forgive the first one, I think. Not the second.”

For a long time Adrian remained still and rigid against Luís. It was impossible to see his face, but somehow Luís knew the man was staring at him with that strange opaque look, as if Adrian had to think so deeply that he needed that blankness to protect something while his mind was on other matters.

“I still think I have to—to do something, to make penance,” Adrian finally said in a halting, strained tone. He inhaled once, then put his head back on Luís’ shoulder. “I need to make up for it, for the wrong.”

“I never said you shouldn’t, only that it wouldn’t be me. But penance might be good for you. Or it might not, it’s up to you.” Then Luís shrugged and twisted his leg away from the slight jab Adrian’s knee had made at it. “I told you, I always was a terrible priest. Especially at confession. You’re supposed to only listen and judge, but I could never help getting involved. And usually got the judgments wrong, too.”

Adrian slid his knee back, but gently so it merely rested against Luís. He resettled his head, the tension slowly draining out of his body; he absently wiped his eyes on Luís’ shirt before catching himself and, with a muffled curse, substituting his sleeve. “Whatever you were like then, I think you’re a better priest now.”

“I’m—” Luís swallowed, and found his throat oddly tight “—I’m not one now.”

The other man only snorted, rubbing his cheek against the side of Luís’ neck. He sighed and pushed his hand over Luís’ ribs and up onto Luís’ bicep, loosely gripping that. Then he moved it to Luís’ shoulder, and used it to draw himself up as the rubbing shaded into nuzzling, and then into a warm mouth just under Luís’ ear.

Luís closed his eyes and Adrian pressed another kiss to the side of Luís’ jaw. Then to the corner of Luís’ mouth, and Luís dragged up his hands at that point. He put his fingers between Adrian’s mouth and his own. “Damn it, the horse is making enough noise already.”

“Nobody’s coming,” Adrian mumbled, his frustration clearly penetrating Luís’ fingers. “I can’t hear—”

He stopped, hissing a little. A moment later Luís’ ears barely caught a distant cry—too distant to make out, but it came from an animal’s throat and not from any man’s. And below, the horse let out a sharp whinny.

“Tomorrow we’ll be in a real town, with an inn.” Adrian apparently had been talking to himself, since he started when Luís chuckled. Then his mouth shaped a smile against Luís’ fingertips, and he bent his head into the touch when Luís permitted himself to stroke the other man’s cheek. “Go to sleep. I’m not going to any time soon, so I’ll watch now.”

The words rang familiar, but the memory was so faint right then that Luís easily pushed it away, his exhaustion slipping quickly up on him. He nodded, then curled his hand around Adrian’s neck as the other man pushed himself up so his head was higher than Luís’ own, which dropped back against the pallet and directly into sleep.

* * *

The town at the foot of the mountain was very much an over-glorified village, but it did have an inn and the innkeeper was perfectly willing to provide Luís with a large pot of hot water. The man even had soap available, which was both wonderfully restorative and an indication that they’d made a major trading road and so that their further traveling should be both quicker and in better comfort.

When offered the remainder of the water and the soap, Adrian looked a little oddly at Luís, but once he’d begun scrubbing the dirt off, he seemed to enjoy himself quite a bit. But it did take a good deal of effort on his part, and he was breathless and flushed from more than the hard rubbing by the time he was done. He took a seat on the bed without Luís having to suggest it, then dropped over onto his side once he’d pulled on his shirt.

Just then a knock came at the door: it was only the innkeeper asking after their morning meal, and bringing a brazier to help warm the room, but the man liked his gossip and he kept Luís for several minutes to hear the news from the West. In return he did drop some tidbits about the war here, including the rumor that an army of Turks was besieging or about to besiege Bucharest, but he shied away from any further querying on the subject with wide eyes and up-thrown hands, insisting that it was too dangerous to even speak of. So Luís resigned himself to chit-chat about Matthias and the little of the Hungarian royal court he’d seen.

By the time he’d freed himself from the conversation, Adrian appeared to have fallen asleep. The man put up a good front, but after all, it’d been only a little less than a week since they had met and he was still far from well. Luís checked that Adrian was indeed sleeping and hadn’t fallen into a sick spell again, then pulled a blanket over the man and busied himself with other chores.

He’d just finished tucking the packet between the mattress and the bedframe when Adrian coughed, then rolled over to face Luís. The man’s eyes were already open and merely narrowed slightly when he saw Luís. He pushed the blanket down off his face, then propped himself up on an arm as Luís got off his knees, grimacing as one of them popped.

“He’s right,” Adrian said. The combined light of the brazier and the lantern they’d been allotted was still barely more than a yellow flicker, which exaggerated the pinkness in Adrian’s cheeks and smoothed the grey from his face so he looked little more than a boy. His eyes, however, were old enough. “There’s fighting in Bucharest. And we go any further that way, and we’ll start running into some.”

Luís gripped the bed for support while he massaged his knee. “I’m surprised this town still looks so well.”

“It’s not. But you have to bury things quickly, or…” Adrian rolled his shoulder in a shrug, then pushed himself up onto his other arm. He tipped back his head to watch as Luís straightened up and reached over for the swords, which had been balanced at the end of the bed. “He’s probably fine. The innkeeper.”

“He talks a lot,” Luís replied. After arranging the swords where he could reach them easily while lying down, he moved to the chest at the end of the bed. His money-pouch was still on top of it and he picked that up, then winced a little when he felt how slack the leather was.

“Your Hungarian is better than your Romanian.” When Luís looked over, Adrian shrugged again, apparently fascinated by the stitching in the quilt square before him. His brows drew together as he traced one line with a fingertip. “Still not wonderful, but…”

Luís dithered with the pouch for a few moments, then carried it back with him to stick under the pillow. Then he sat down on the bed and began to take off his boots. “If you heard the part about Bucharest, then you heard me say I came through Hungary.”

“I did,” Adrian said curtly. He flinched when Luís caught him glancing, then dropped his head and hunched up his shoulders. His legs moved restlessly beneath the blankets before he abruptly twisted up and around to sit facing Luís. “Look—”

Boot in hand, Luís looked up.

Adrian stared at him, mouth twitching a little, eyes flicking up and down Luís’ face for some clue. But in the end he didn’t find any, and he turned away, then resumed staring at the blanket with a half-stifled sound of frustration. And of disgust at his cowardice, judging by how his jaw tightened.

“If you send a Roman Catholic messenger after Draculea, of course you’re going to send him to Matthias first,” Luís said after a moment. He hadn’t wanted to speak of it either, given the pride Adrian seemed to take in Romania—not even a Hungarian province, at most a dream mothers told their children with tears in their throats—but he liked less the prospect of having it lie between them, pushing aside whatever…whatever had tentatively taken shape so far. “Hungary gave Draculea the army he’s got now, and seems to be telling him where to go.”

“I know.” That stiff jaw worked a few times before Adrian roughly shook himself. He put up his hands and pressed them over his eyes, then dragged them slowly back over his head. Then he sighed, and looked up at Luís with a plea for forgiveness in his eyes that was—he _was_ young, whatever he thought. “I—never mind. Anyway, you still want to go to Bucharest, I think. It’ll be more difficult, but we can go through the woods and mountains, and miss most of the armies. And you speak Hungarian too, so that will help.”

“I was sent _to_ Matthias, not by him.” Luís glanced at Adrian, then turned away from the man’s expression. He put down his boot, pulled off his other one and set it beside the first, and then pushed himself back onto the bed. “I told you, I’m not out of the Church yet. I just can’t…well, I never did speak for it, really.”

Adrian slid aside to make room, pulling his knees up beneath his chin. He wrapped his arms around his legs, then unwrapped one to flip aside the blankets for Luís. That surprised, pleased light was still in his eyes. “So what does the Pope want with Draculea? A little late for his soul, isn’t it?”

“Don’t you think he’d send an actual priest for that, at least?” Luís snorted. Then he paused, his hand half-closed around a clump of quilt.

“Lucky guess. I don’t know anything about your Church.” Nervous rustling. “I’m sor—”

Sighing, Luís simply pushed aside the blankets for his legs, then leaned back against the headboard. He reached towards his neck, but his hand bumped into the underside of Adrian’s jaw as the other man bent towards him. Adrian stopped, breathing in sharply. Then he began to withdraw, but Luís changed his mind and caught the man’s shoulder, and after a moment, Adrian obligingly moved to rest his head against Luís’ chest.

“Actually, I have no idea who wants to send the damn message. They only gave it to me, and you’re not to ask questions. It’s a cardinal at least, but other than that…your guess is as good as mine. Maybe it is the Pope, even. Talking about another crusade against the infidels,” Luís muttered. He paused when something brushed over him, then exhaled against the weight of Adrian’s hands as they settled on his stomach. “I don’t really care. When I say I’m more religious now, that doesn’t mean I’m more fond of the…well, the Church. They’re only men in robes, like you said.”

“I didn’t say the part about the robes.” Though Adrian’s tone was affectionate, and when Luís glanced at him, the other man rubbed his cheek over Luís’ shoulder in an odd sort of caress. His eyes closed as Luís curved an arm about his waist, their lashes throwing long soft shadows over his face.

He seemed to be dozing again, but Luís waited for several minutes to see if the man would stir. At least, that was what Luís reasoned: in all honesty, Luís did like looking at Adrian. The scrubbing had raised a pink blush in the hollows of the man’s cheeks that still lingered, giving him a healthier glow than Luís had seen on him since…than Luís had ever seen on him. And Adrian had shaved as well, so the dim light seemed to paint his skin a smooth gold.

“So why are you taking it?” The murmur came so softly that Luís thought he’d imagined it, but then Adrian’s lashes lifted slightly, and the man tilted his head. He glanced at Luís, tension pulling the smoothness from the skin about his mouth, then looked away at his hands. “You don’t care about it, and you…they can’t have promised to save you in return. Not if they sent you here.”

“They could be thinking that earthly agony purifies the soul.” Then Luís frowned. “I was joking.”

Adrian had curled back his fingers from where they’d stabbed at Luís’ belly, but he didn’t look up for a moment. And when he did, he sat up fully so that Luís’ arm was forced off of him. “Don’t joke about that.”

He continued to stare hard at Luís, even when Luís turned his head to meet it; Adrian’s shoulders moved in a slight flinch, but otherwise the other man held his ground. The set of his jaw was firmer than steel, but it was the genuine fear in Adrian’s eyes that ultimately provoked a short nod from Luís. Then Luís leaned back, frowning again because he didn’t quite know why he’d done that. Perhaps it was a bad joke to Adrian, but a bad joke was a bad joke, not a vow.

“To be honest, if they want me to die on this trip, I wouldn’t have a hard time believing it,” Luís said. This time he didn’t look at the sudden rippling of the mattress beside him. Nor did his mind change a second time as he put up his hand to draw out his rosary. He didn’t pull the string over his head, but only lifted the cross free of his shirt to finger its ends. “I’ve been a lot of trouble to them. Bad priest, then offending a very powerful man by bedding his wife…he’s still alive, unfortunately. And not the forgiving type.”

“Is that why you took up soldiering?” After another pointless rustle, Adrian pushed himself up against Luís, but facing him so Adrian’s knee laid alongside Luís’ hip. He kept his hands folded in his lap, where they twisted their fingers around each other.

Luís blinked, not quite understanding the relation of the question to what he’d said. Then he did, and he smiled before he could help himself. He did notice the flicker of annoyance in Adrian’s eyes, but it quickly vanished amid the concern. “Oh, no, no. I took it up because of what I told you—I needed something to do, and when you have powerful people against you there’s not much else that’s open. Soldiering isn’t much help in Italy. A jealous husband’s not going to take an army after you. He’ll just poison you, or hire an assassin. Which was—well, that was one reason why I had to leave the country.”

“You couldn’t have been a priest somewhere else?” Adrian asked. He raised his brows at whatever Luís’ expression said to him. “I think you still like it. And I’ve heard of priests doing worse, and still staying.”

“Well, yes, but they usually have a cardinal for an uncle or something like that. All I ever had was myself—I did have a mentor, the man who brought me into the Church, but he died when I was still an acolyte. And…” Luís listened to his voice fade, then swallowed. Then he pushed himself up the headboard, pulling up a knee as he went. “And no, I don’t like it.”

“You do.”

The certainty in Adrian’s tone made Luís turn rather sharply to look at him, but Adrian didn’t flinch. He merely looked back, and after a moment, casually twisted about to get his legs out from under him.

“I didn’t,” Luís said firmly. “I—couldn’t. Not after—being a priest afterward would have felt like I’d never…never met her. Never left her. And I can at least remember her. Do that much.”

Adrian raised his head again, first surprise and then a sad kind of understanding coming into his eyes. But not pity, oddly enough. And then he leaned forward, lifting his hand towards Luís’ face, and his expression changed again to a stubborn…it wasn’t a refusal, because he did understand, but at the same time he found something wrong with that.

“I still think…” he started. Then he dropped his gaze. His hand fell a little as well, then rose again so its knuckles brushed the edge of Luís’ jaw. He paused, head held slightly to the side, before bending forward. His mouth touched Luís’ lower lip, then eased upward. Then he stopped again, doing a terrible job of suppressing his sigh. “It’s fine. Nobody will hear. And I…please? I want to.”

As he spoke, his fingers grazed over Luís’ jaw again, light but clinging as a spiderweb. They drew Luís towards them, and then Luís caught himself. He reached for Adrian, but his hand tangled in his rosary and was jerked back. He shook that free, but by then Adrian had kissed him full on the mouth, and Luís found himself holding the man instead of pushing him away. Then pulling Adrian towards him, and then down onto the bed.

Adrian was warm against his hands—not feverish, not full of desperate fire, but _warm_. Warm and lithe and eager, his mouth giving the angles of Luís’ face such devoted attention that it verged on blasphemous worship. He pushed against Luís as much as Luís pushed against him, but always his movements ended in a soft tease of a slide, his hands running over Luís’ back, his thighs rubbing insistently against Luís’ hips. He did want it, and he ensured that Luís knew what it was that he wanted with his whole body.

The bandage on Adrian’s leg gave Luís’ lust-blurred mind a moment’s pause, but while Luís tried to be rational, Adrian twisted his hand past Luís’ fingers. He stretched himself, then had clasped his legs about Luís’ waist by the time Luís cursed and grabbed at the man; Luís’ oil-slicked fingers slipped Adrian’s skin, but before that they pulled Adrian forward enough so that Adrian had to bite his hand to muffle his cry. Then Luís set his hands again at Adrian’s waist, bending so his breath rasped across the curve of Adrian’s neck to reflect back onto his face, and Adrian took his hand out of his mouth and put it on Luís’ back, pulling till Luís’ mouth sealed over the man’s throat.

It _was_ sacrilege. Sacrilege and sweet in it, and like all temptation, so simple in the way it drew one into itself. Easy, the way Luís buried himself in the other man—easy, the way Adrian let him, invited him, _welcomed_ him and Luís had learned already that that was a false dawn, that simplicity was the greatest illusion of them all. He’d been shown the difficulty and the pain that came afterwards, and he knew that that would always follow, and yet…and yet he took this, when it was offered. He took it in both hands, and he held onto Adrian for as long as he could.

* * *

“I don’t know why I’m doing this,” Luís whispered a long time later. Adrian’s head was a gentle weight on his arm, and the rest of the man was curled up against him, fast asleep, so Luís couldn’t have been speaking to him. But Luís didn’t believe he was speaking to himself either, and they were the only ones in the room. “I had an idea about it, when I started, but now…but I gave my word. I have my word still—I want to keep what I do have.”

Then he sighed. His eyes began to close, but they snapped open as Adrian shifted against him. But the other man only pushed his face closer to Luís’ throat, his hair grazing one side of Luís’ jaw, and after another moment, Luís shut his eyes.

* * *

From then on they had better roads and proper inns in which to stay each night, but those small comforts were outweighed by the unmistakable signs of fighting that crept around them. And it was no real compensation that Luís’ limited medical skills were still so valuable that he rarely had to pay for anything; he had not gone into soldiering out of a liking for violence or its aftermath, and he was brutally reminded of that with every gaping wound, weeping woman or solemn priest that passed across his sight.

Though he was growing duller to such things, he half-realized. He could come across the remains of a raid, and the feeling in his chest now was a grim bitterness, and not nausea.

“Boyars,” Adrian sighed. Then he frowned and jerked at something, and after a protesting whinny, a horse reluctantly stepped out from behind a bush. It was on the small side, little more than a pony, and its saddle-blanket was matted with blood, but it didn’t seem injured. “I think this was only fun. See, these cuts, they’re all from behind, and they didn’t take the—”

“Don’t tell me about it,” Luís snapped. He went forward a few paces, looking for a sign of life that he knew he wouldn’t find, then turned about to stare at the mountains in the distance. His temple throbbed, but when he put up his hand to rub at it, the pain went away. Instead a coldness seemed to settle all through him. “Adrian. Sorry. I…”

Adrian cursed at something, and his tone carried enough heat so that Luís looked over at him. Then farther, at the gray dot on the hill behind them. It whirled and disappeared down the other side, and then Adrian abruptly pushed forward, dragging the horse with him. “They should wait. That’s only…but even they don’t care now. Look, we need to go. You can’t bury them. We don’t have the time. If you want you can say something at the next village.”

For all that they’d seen—including Luís’ awful moods, which Luís had to admit seemed to be the only moods he had now—Adrian had remained relatively agreeable. The brutalities did bother him, to the point that sometimes he whimpered at night in the grips of some nightmare, but during the day he kept his head and kept them moving forward. He even worked to distract Luís with questions about Italy, or answers to Luís’ questions about the wars here; he’d been attempting the latter when Luís had let his temper get the better of him. So for him to be so visibly upset now, at carnage that was terrible but that was hardly fresh to their eyes…Luís followed Adrian as the other man walked quickly away, shoulders stiff and stride jerky.

By the time they had made the next village, Adrian had calmed down to the point of wondering aloud what he should name his new horse, but Luís still refrained from asking the other man about the earlier outburst. It wasn’t that his curiosity had dampened—on the contrary, it seemed to have increased.

But he’d come to value their odd relationship, even though there were parts of it that he didn’t understand. And of those parts, there were parts that Luís sometimes thought he was afraid to understand, or even to recognize as present. Doing so would make them real, and reality, unfortunately, was something that Luís had a habit of facing whether he liked it or not.

“What?” Adrian arched one brow. “You’re smiling, but you look like you’re in pain.”

“Oh…I think I’m rather pathetic sometimes, is all,” Luís said, shrugging. He gazed at the sky, watching the dark clouds that were quickly blowing up. From where they were, he could already glimpse the church steeple of the next town, but likely they wouldn’t be able to go any further today. “I have awful habits and I know about them, and can’t do anything about them. Or I won’t do anything, would be the truth.”

“Then maybe they aren’t so awful?” After looking at the sky himself, Adrian clucked at his horse to go a little faster. He slipped a glance at Luís, then absently rubbed one hand over his cheek. “If you won’t, then you don’t think they should be changed. And—”

Luís snorted. “You think very highly of me. But you know, sometimes I am wrong about things.”

“Oh, I know.” A slight smile came and went as Adrian deliberately avoided Luís’ eyes. Then he looked down at his horse, making a shushing noise as it unexpectedly side-stepped; it didn’t like him any better than Luís’ horse did, but normally it bore its resignation to carrying him a good deal better. “But I don’t think you are when it’s important. You…you care too much, to make a mistake then. And I know—but it’s not the same, doing wrong and having it come out badly. Like you said.”

“Thank you,” Luís said after a long time. He looked at the sky, then shook his head. “Thank you, but that’s not what I said, quite…”

“I know, but still.” Then Adrian rolled a shoulder, apologetic and stubbornly defiant all at once. He glanced at Luís, then frowned and went still, squinting at something off in the distance.

Adrian peeled away and went ahead a few strides to get a better look. It seemed to be nothing since he allowed Luís to catch up and then settled his horse back beside Luís’ own, but it had still interrupted the conversation. After several minutes, Adrian did speak again, but to ask whether the Pope had ever meant to send a crusade to help Draculea against the Turks. He didn’t return to the previous topic and Luís didn’t ask him to.

* * *

With two horses, their pace of travel picked up considerably even though the snowfall had turned heavy and they were forced off the roads in order to avoid the soldiers that infested the area. Or the bandits: they all seemed occupied with the same work of ruining what little traces of humanity there were in this wild land, and they wore nothing that distinguished them from each other. In fact, it was difficult simply to distinguish them from the rest of the populace; several times Luís and Adrian mistook some for villagers, only to have to ram their heels into their horses’ sides when the swords came out.

Although generally, Adrian had an uncanny sense for lurking danger and managed to steer them clear with a minimum of effort more times than Luís could count. For that matter, Luís was certain that it was more times than he knew about, given his overall inexperience. He would’ve liked to ask Adrian to confirm the suspicion, but over the last few days, the other man had turned tense and silent, moving and speaking only as much as absolutely necessary. Adrian seemed perpetually watching for something just over the horizon, his eyes slitted against the wind and his shoulders half-hunched in preparation for a blow.

“No more doctoring?” Luís observed, turning back the bedfurs.

Halfway through the door, Adrian stilled as if Luís had turned a crossbow on him. The top of the doorway groaned under his tight grip, then emitted a sighing creak as he abruptly released it and ducked fully into the room. He flicked that palm over his thigh in a quick, dismissive gesture, already twisting towards their belongings in the corner. “You want to be drafted? People who want a doctor here—”

“All right.” Luís shook his hands free of the furs—they were on the thin side, and several hairs came away with his fingers—then loosened the ties of his coat and shirt. Then he frowned and put his hand up inside his shirt, fumbling about for his rosary: the beads had gotten twisted about and were wrenching at his neck.

“Anyway, we already have swords. Would be a good enough excuse to drag us in, if they were looking,” Adrian added in a tight mutter. He stared at their bags, then got down on his knees and began to push at them.

He arranged them in some sort of order, then switched two around before he felt at the floorboards. One creaked and Adrian sat back to get his dagger from his boot, then worked the tip under the board and used that to lever it up. Then he leaned over the exposed hole, hands planted on either side of it, and studied the revealed space so intensely that Luís almost thought the better of the extra coin he’d paid for a brazier to be brought up.

Eventually Adrian seemed to find it acceptable, as after some dusting about with his hands, he carefully laid the bags under the flooring. All except for the last, which Luís hastily dove to snatch up—Adrian blinked, and then his arm flashed out to seize the other side. He tugged before he looked up, but by then Luís had flipped open the top and had taken out the packet he needed. Luís let go of the rest of the bag and began to straighten up, only to find himself slapping away Adrian’s hand from the packet. They both cursed.

Adrian rolled back against the side of the bed, clutching his hand and looking up at Luís with overtones of betrayal in his eyes. He glanced down, then up again, and Luís couldn’t hold in his exasperation any longer. “Thank you, but I don’t need you to see after everything.”

It wasn’t that Luís thought the floor wasn’t a good spot, or that he distrusted Adrian by this point. But if they needed to leave quickly, then they wouldn’t have time to tear up the floor and the damn packet was something that had to go with Luís even more than extra food or money did. So under the mattress, where Luís was shoving the packet now, would make for easier retrieval. And it sounded eminently reasonable even when Luís had finished with the task and had calmed a little, but its reasonableness still failed to banish the guilt that nagged at the edges.

The inn’s maid arrived with the brazier then, so Luís went to receive that to keep her from coming in and seeing the floor. He initially set it down in the corner, but decided to move it to under the single small window when he noticed how thick the smoke it threw off was. It was a very cramped room, and though the window’s draft would suck away most of the heated air, the trade-off would at least prevent them from suffocating.

Then Luís turned back to the bed. The board was set back in place, but Adrian was still on the floor, his shoulders braced against the edge of the bedframe, knees drawn up beneath his chin. He moved his head a little towards Luís, but otherwise kept that and his gaze low, mostly pointed at the hand he was nervously rubbing up and down one shin. Luís grimaced and touched his right temple, then took a deep breath.

“So what are you doing, after you deliver this message?” Adrian abruptly asked. His lips thinned, and then he dropped his head to press one cheek against the top of his left knee, preventing Luís from seeing his expression. “Are you going back to Italy?”

“I can’t. My—”

But Adrian was already wincing and shaking his head. He waved a hand, then put its fingers back to scratch at his brow. “No, no, I remember now. Sorry.”

“I don’t know,” Luís finally said. He paused, then came over to sit on the edge of the bed to Adrian’s left. “I’m not supposed to report back to the Church, though Matthias said I was welcome to stay with him again. Actually, he wanted to know if I’d like to help with his library. I think he liked my writing script.”

Adrian glanced up at that, arched brows indicating his disbelief. Then his mouth curved slightly, but by the time he’d put his head back on his knee, the smile had vanished.

“I don’t think I can stay here.” Luís watched for the hitch in Adrian’s shoulders and wasn’t disappointed. Though, oddly enough, a part of him wished he had been. “Nothing against your country, but—”

“No, I’d say the same thing. You shouldn’t be here anyway. You don’t…” That fringe of hair disappeared under Adrian’s fingers, then reappeared half-crushed by their pressure, the strands ruffled and bent in all directions. Adrian scuffed a foot against the floor, now pulling at his nose. “You like soap too much. It’s damn expensive, you know?”

A laugh startled out of Luís. He gripped the bedframe, twisting his fingers around the rough wood, then leaned back and laughed again. “And gets me accused of being a damn infidel, I suppose.”

Good humor shivered quickly to death in the cold air here, but there was more to Adrian’s silence than that. The other man wouldn’t meet Luís’ sharp look, though his desultory shrug was eloquent enough.

Luís pursed his lips, then drew breath to speak, but once again Adrian was the quicker of them. Before the first word could even rise to Luís’ tongue, Adrian had turned and put his brow against Luís’ knee, one hand dropping to curl around Luís’ ankle. He exhaled, shoulders trembling, then turned his head so it was lying sideways against Luís.

“He’s not in Bucharest,” Adrian said, so soft and shaky that Luís had to strain for the words. “Draculea. He’s been brought to battle—chased—no one’s sure yet. It was only a day ago that he showed, and I don’t know if the fighting’s done. But it’s three hours away. I can—I’ll show you.”

“Oh.” For a moment Luís didn’t know what else to say. He looked at his hands, not remembering why he was holding them up.

Then he did, but that sensible thought was swallowed up in the sudden tangle of nonsense that rushed up. He was nearly done, he might never be done if Draculea had died in the damn battle, perhaps there hadn’t even been a battle, he’d never thought he’d be at the point where he even had to consider—Luís pinched his nose and pressed his lips shut till it looked as if he’d closed his eyes as well. Then he allowed himself to breathe. He gazed around the room, which was the same dingy small space as it’d been before, and then he cursed as he saw Adrian still clutching his leg.

Luís barely touched Adrian’s shoulder, but the other man reacted as if Luís had tried to wrench him away, fingers closing tight about Luís’ ankle, stuttered breath bursting from him as he ground his temple into Luís’ knee. He gasped a few times, then abruptly set his shoulders back and slowly dragged his head away. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “I mean, I will take you, and I…after…never mind…”

“Would you want to leave? It’s—I can’t stay. I’m going to get myself killed…actually, that was the whole point of coming here.” Then Luís waited for several seconds, but the…whatever he’d been expecting, it didn’t happen. He was curiously disappointed, considering the magnitude of the confession. But then, perhaps he’d never really believed in that idea. “There didn’t seem to be anything else I could do. No priesthood, no family…but I’m as bad at seeking honor as I am at everything else. I’m just…well, it’s too unappealing for me. I’ve tried and tried, but I can’t bring myself to it.” He had to snort at that, but then tried to redirect his attention to what currently mattered. “But this is your land, and well, I didn’t want to leave Italy. For that matter, I didn’t want to leave Portugal either, but I…was lucky. For a while.”

Adrian gazed up at him, brows slightly pulled together, frowning. He cupped a hand over Luís’ knee to help support himself, then tipped his head. “Wait…you would…like me with you?”

“I’m unemployed and I can’t go anywhere near Italy. Or Sweden,” Luís said. He rubbed at his nose. “I took a short trip north—Helen is from there, and I thought some of her relations might know…but they’re not any happier with me than her husband was.”

“Helen?” Adrian repeated slowly. He held his mouth partly open, thinking, then nodded and pushed himself up on his knees, resting both hands on Luís’ thighs. The confusion was slowly leaving his face, but it wasn’t yet clear what its replacement was. “I’ve never been away from here.”

Luís nodded absentmindedly, more preoccupied with the look in Adrian’s eyes than with listening to the man. He brushed at his leg and his hand ran into Adrian’s fingers, which at first resisted and then wrapped around his wrist when he tried to push them off. His muscles were—sore, he thought. Cramp, probably, and he needed to stand and walk it off. “The West isn’t that much better. Even with more soap. People make war and grow jealous and wrong each other just as they—”

“Then it’s nothing to worry about, yes?” Adrian grabbed Luís’ other hand, then pulled both together and down, so their hands were resting in Luís’ lap. He looked at that knot of flesh, his head dipping so low that Luís thought the man meant to—but Adrian jerked his head back before more than his breath had touched their skin. His eyes were bright, and when he spoke, his lips kept trying to draw back further than they needed to, so that the brightness of his teeth flashed in hesitant glimpses. “Besides, this—this isn’t my land now. That’s gone. They’ve let it go, the boyars, the kings…even the wolves know. They don’t care now, because it’s not Romanians they’re coming after, that they’ve known all their lives. It’s the Turks, and…and I don’t want to stay and see that. Maybe, someday, this will change, but not now. Now—I should leave, too. And I want to go with you. I want that.”

Then he fell silent. His eyes burned for a moment longer before he abruptly dropped his head, as if embarrassed by the passion in his words. He twisted his fingers through Luís’ own, then sighed as Luís pulled one hand free. Then he began to look up, but as Luís stroked a pair of knuckles down the side of Adrian’s face, the other man instead turned to follow that touch, eyes closed, shoulders slumping in contentment.

“I wondered for a while,” Luís said quietly. “What kind of man could leave a woman and child like I did. Even if she forgave me for it…I wondered what I was. What I was, and if I’d always be that. If I’d ever be capable again of…”

Adrian pushed against Luís’ hand, then turned his head so his gaze would just hold Luís. “You’re a good man. Whatever you were before, you’re that now. You’ve done good. For me, anyway. I know that’s not much, but I’m thankful.”

Luís swallowed, feeling the rasp in his throat, and then covered Adrian’s hands with his own, and drew up the other man before Adrian could finish.

* * *

It was still dark when they set out, and only the grey of false dawn touched the sky when they began to run across the first of the bodies. Adrian glanced over the corpses, then reached over his shoulder and loosened his sword in its scabbard.

“Draculea lost,” he said when Luís glanced at him. He tucked his chin into his chest, fingering the slack of the reins, then abruptly kicked his horse forward. “But not here. He’ll have gone down in the middle, not fleeing.”

Then Adrian said nothing. He led them further into the woods, moving carefully through the bodies, stopping every so often to listen. It was deathly quiet among the trees; the thick layer of snow softened sounds, but even beyond that, something seemed to have driven all life from the area. Not even the crows had come.

Human or animal, Luís thought, and he found the absence of the former more puzzling. Birds might have been deterred by the bitter cold, but scavengers of the earthbound, two-footed variety seemed to proliferate no matter what the conditions were, so long as there were dead to rob. And oddly enough, he thought it would have been more reassuring to see such signs. Pettiness and greed were part of human nature, but fear came from somewhere else, from something else.

As they proceeded, the trees began to thin and here and there the corpses fell in clumps instead of in the single face-down posture they’d encountered in the beginning. At first Luís read that as an indication that they were coming across groups that had stood to fight, but he changed his mind when he saw the agony twisting the faces of the dead men. He shivered, then cursed under his breath as his horse started. At nothing, he thought with surprising heat—they were all dead and couldn’t spook the damn beast.

Then it started again, and even the nervy echo of Luís’ exasperated breath couldn’t keep him from dismounting. He rolled his hips to rid himself of saddle stiffness, then waved off Adrian as the other man turned back. “I don’t want to be thrown by this idiotic animal. I’ll walk.”

Adrian nodded, then dismounted himself. He shrugged at Luís’ querying eyebrow. “We might as well. The ground’s getting too bad.”

Luís felt an inexplicable flare of irritation, though the other man had spoken only sense, and had done so in a mild tone. Not trusting his tongue, he merely nodded his reply, then busied himself with looping up his reins in one hand as he strode after Adrian.

The corpses were growing thicker on the ground. Here and there Luís also saw a few pieces of Turkish origin—a broken sword, a piece of brightly-colored silk—but curiously, no bodies in Turkish clothing. Even if it’d been a rout, he couldn’t imagine that the Turks had suffered no casualties.

“These are all Moldavians—Draculea’s men. They’ve taken the bodies for the others already,” Adrian said, as if hearing Luís’ thoughts. He paused, head cocked to hear something, then pivoted to the west and continued into a little thicket till he’d almost disappeared in the brush.

Luís glanced at him, then half-turned as a flicker of color caught his eye. He stiffened, then relaxed as he realized it was only a bit of cloth fluttering in the breeze. After a look around, he took a step towards it. The cloth had a little embroidery showing and seemed to be part of a much bigger piece, possibly a banner, but the rest of it was buried in the snow so he began to push at that with his toe. Then he took out his sword and started to shovel with it.

A rustling noise made Luís look up. Then he turned around to find that Adrian was no longer in sight, though Adrian’s horse remained where it had been before. Frowning, Luís went over to it and found that its reins had been carelessly tossed over a nearby branch, hardly enough to prevent the horse from bolting if it was frightened. “Adrian?” he called, reaching for the reins. He pulled out a loop, then twisted it and doubled it back on itself, making half a knot. “Adrian?”

Adrian called back, but it was too muffled for Luís to make any sense of it. The rustling grew louder, and now that Luís was paying attention to it, he thought he could make out some low groans as well. He glanced about him, but of course everyone else was still dead and so Luís tied up his horse next to Adrian’s, hacked a few branches away to make room, and then ducked into the brush.

The twigs were thick enough so that Luís had to slash a few more times before he made any headway—Adrian had seemed to simply slip into the thicket, like a ghost—but the tangle was only a few feet thick. It broke unexpectedly, spilling him out into a small, bloodstained clearing. He stumbled once, then looked up and had bile slam into the roof of his mouth so viciously that he fell back nearly onto his knees.

After steadying himself with his sword, Luís straightened up with his hand pressed hard over his mouth. He closed his eyes, then opened them and turned his head so he just glimpsed the bodies. As a priest in Milan, he’d seen his share of mob excesses, but this was still—he jerked his head away, unable to look directly at it.

Adrian was about a yard away, kneeling over a body and furiously ripping at its clothing. He glanced up barely long enough to note where Luís was, then went back to what he was doing. Bright red blood was bubbling up between his hands—it wasn’t a body to which he was tending, but a living man. At least for now.

“Boyars,” Adrian mumbled under his breath, his haste not quite obscuring the anger in his voice. Then his voice smoothed and became soothing as the man moaned. He spoke quietly to the man for a few seconds, then resumed trying to fashion a bandage about his waist when the man—eyes rolling back into his head—managed a minute nod. “I don’t put anything past the Turks, but they just want the damn land. Draculea did that to frighten people, so now the boyars do it to mock him. That’s all they’re good for, mocking.”

Luís swallowed a few times, but couldn’t rid himself of the acid taste in his mouth. He wasn’t a soldier, he remembered, and he stood there uselessly for several seconds before his sword-tip caught on the ground. He looked at it, then jammed the blade down so it’d stand on its own. Then he stepped back, averting his eyes from the stakes, and got down next to Adrian while rolling up his sleeves. “I thought it was…done through the…between the legs…”

Awful way to make conversation, though the look Adrian gave him held only surprise that Luís was helping, not disgust. Then Adrian shrugged and grabbed Luís’ hand, pressing it down over the stab wound to keep the wadded cloth in place while Adrian tied off the binding. “Oh, a lot of times, but you know rulers, don’t you? They get bored, they want to see the poles go in different ways…no, press harder.”

The man whimpered and Luís looked over, then bit back the words. He did know what that deep pallor and that waxen sheen to the eyes meant, but with the feverishness of Adrian’s movements, he didn’t think it was wise to explain. Besides, Adrian had to know as well—if he didn’t want to recognize it right now, it would do no immediate harm. No one else was around, and Luís—he frowned, reviewing Adrian’s words. “Draculea ‘did’?”

“He’s dead.” Adrian finished the knot, then rocked back on his heels, still staring at the wounded man. He absently lifted his hand to wipe away the sweat on his brow, but jerked to a stop a moment before. He looked at the blood on his fingers, then dashed his hand across the ground with a snarled curse. “He was brought down about two hundred yards from here. Cristian saw it, but the Turks were too thick, and then…God.” His shoulders shuddered once, and he mouthed something at the ground that Luís suspected had a good deal less to do with God. “His body’s gone. Maybe the Turks have it, maybe the boyars. Nobody knows.”

“Cristian? He’s a friend?” Luís asked. And almost immediately regretted it, given the red-rimmed eyes Adrian raised to him.

But Adrian merely nodded, curt and slight. He took a deep breath, pressed the clean back of his hand against his brow, and then bent down to get his hands under the other man. When the—when Cristian groaned, Adrian sat back, muttering to himself, but then jerked his head about and jammed his hands under the man’s side. “We need to move him.”

Luís didn’t bother to nod as he stooped, but he’d barely touched the man when Cristian threw back his head, tossing strings of frothy blood from his mouth. Cristian was hissing something, and it wasn’t intelligible to Luís but it must have been to Adrian, who lunged to pin him down.

“I don’t care!” he hissed at Cristian. “I know, I know, but you have to—even if you’re dying, _when_ you’re dying, you—”

He hissed again, then dropped back in surprise as Luís paused to resettle Cristian in his arms. Then Luís lifted him fully off the ground; the man was heavy, but Luís had been hauling himself up and down the mountains for months, and for much less worthy reasons.

As Luís stood, Adrian moved around to get Cristian’s legs, ducking a weak kick. Cristian’s breathing grew harsher, and then he groaned a distinctly irritated “Adi…”

“You can tell me about it when you come back,” Adrian snorted. His voice cracked twice, and he made to tuck in his chin before a stumble on Luís’ part forced him to concentrate on Cristian.

Together he and Luís got Cristian out of the thicket and onto Adrian’s horse—Luís’ damn mount, true to form, promptly threw a fit upon seeing the fresh blood. Once Cristian was on the saddle, Luís had to leave Adrian to balance and fasten the man so he could calm his own horse. “Goddamn—whoa!”

At first he thought it’d tried to bolt on him, and so he dragged as hard as he could on the handful of reins and the grip on the stirrup that he had. But it came too quickly to heel, and then Luís heard two wet crunches. They came in quick succession, and were followed a little more slowly by a thump. Then he smelled more blood.

Luís whipped around, reaching for his sword. And it wasn’t there, because he’d left it standing by where they’d found Cristian, but Adrian still had his and the tip of it was red as he dragged its tip towards him, then swung it heavily over his shoulder and back into the scabbard. He gasped and staggered as he did, but then straightened up and nodded calmly enough towards the crimson decorating the corpse before them, like a gigantic lace collar fanning out from the slashed throat.

“Moldavian,” Adrian said shortly. He took a half-step back, seeming to be in some difficulty, but then he irritably elbowed away Luís’ hand. In the same movement he turned on his heel and grabbed his horse’s saddle to mount. He shrugged as he pulled himself up. “But I didn’t know, and he didn’t know…he tried to shoot you with a crossbow.”

The weapon in question was lying only a few inches from Luís’ foot. He turned it over with his toe, then got into the saddle himself. “Are you all right?”

Adrian was busy trying to hold Cristian against him—the man was in no condition to ride, but Adrian’s horse wasn’t big enough for him to lie across its back—and didn’t answer as he turned his horse to the left. Then he looked at Luís, only his eyes visible over Cristian’s shoulder. “Your horse still doesn’t like me.”

“I’m selling it as soon as we get to a decent market,” Luís promised. He glanced at the dead man again, then snapped his reins and followed Adrian out of the woods.

* * *

They were barely clear of the battleground, having only crested the first clear hill after it, before Adrian reined in his horse. By the time Luís had noticed and wheeled back, the other man had Cristian down on the ground and was bending over him. Cradling his head, and Luís needed to come no closer to know that Cristian couldn’t last any longer.

He stood aside, close enough to hear the voices but not close enough to make out any words, much less try to understand them. Once he did look, and he saw Adrian with his face hidden in his hand while Cristian shakily brushed a bloody streak across Adrian’s cheek with two knuckles. It was good to see—at least Adrian was wrong, and Luís wasn’t the only one who didn’t find him hopeless—but at the same time…Luís took out his rosary and began counting beads. Not telling them: the prayers wouldn’t come to him. It was just as well, since they didn’t seem correct either.

Luís gave Adrian a few minutes after the last rough choking ended. Then he jammed his beads back into his shirt and came over. He waited another moment before touching Adrian, still hunched over his friend, on the shoulder. “I’m sorry, but we—”

“I was only joking about the burial,” Adrian said thickly. A long, uneven breath interrupted. “You don’t bury us. Just…just lay us out in the grass, where no people will come for a night. And don’t…don’t…”

At that point Luís had seized the man’s shoulder and was dropping onto his knees. He started to pull Adrian around, but when he saw the blood on the man’s lips he stopped. Then he swore and his hands—they pulled the heavy broadsword from Adrian’s back, then fumbled and ripped till the layers of clothing fell back to show the end of the crossbow bolt embedded in Adrian’s gut. Then they turned numb and shaking, and Luís glanced first at the sky before turning violently away from that. He looked at Adrian again, then stared over the other man’s bowed head.

“Sorry.” Adrian coughed wetly. Something brushed at Luís’ thighs, and then Luís barely caught the other man as he collapsed. “Sorry. It’s…I wanted to get away from there first. And—and sorry, I can’t—I said I’d go and I can’t. I…I did want to, but I…stepped wrong. I keep doing that…”

“You surprised me again. I thought I said to stop doing that,” Luís finally said. His voice sounded deeper than usual. He couldn’t look away any more because the glitter of the snow made his eyes hurt, so he turned his face into the side of Adrian’s head.

A little gargling chuckle shook its way out of Adrian. “Finally, you make a joke.”

“Well, what else am I supposed to do?” Luís grimaced at the sharpness in his tone, then pushed down with his hands. He maneuvered them under Adrian’s arms before feeling lower, till—

Adrian gasped, his fingers closing viciously on Luís’ arms. Then he whined and Luís couldn’t and took away his hands, and Adrian slumped in momentarily relief against Luís. His blood was soaking into Luís’ shirt, running down Luís’ neck to stick the rosary beads to Luís’ skin. “Listen. You forgot your damn sword, you can have mine. It was—supposed to go to my son, but I want you to have it. It’s better than yours, anyway. And don’t—don’t bury me.”

“I’m not a soldier, Adr—”

“At least keep it till you can give it to somebody who can use it. It’s _good_. Don’t—don’t waste it. Don’t bury it either. Or—or me,” Adrian gasped. He shuddered violently, a pained cry wringing from him near the end. His fingers dragged at Luís’ arms, then tried to climb back up. “Please, _please_.”

He cried out again when Luís pulled him away, but then sighed with such relief when he realized Luís was only turning him onto his uninjured side that Luís wished he hadn’t done that in the first place. Luís bit his lip—his eyes still hurt, damn them—and looked down at Adrian. Then he closed his eyes to see if that would help. “All right. All right, all right, I’ll take it. And I won’t bury you.”

“Good.” Adrian moved his head a little, settling himself more comfortably against Luís’ shoulder, as if they were merely bedding down for the night. He sighed again. “Good. Then you have to…to leave here. You should. You—no, _listen_. The dead…they don’t miss the living, whatever they say. So there’s no point—no point in staying for them.”

“Is this another story?” Luís said. His voice wavered a little.

“Maybe.” Then Adrian laughed, a little ghost of a sound. His fingers brushed over Luís’ thigh till Luís took them up, and then they half-curled around Luís’ hand.

Luís stared at the man’s fingers, their dirty knuckles with the fresh blood coating over the old crusts, making the whorls of the calluses stand out. “I should’ve just broken my damn word. It had nothing to do with me—even I didn’t think so.”

“What? But—” Adrian wheezed and his eyes snapped shut, then opened very wide to show the gold sheen coming over them “—but you came here for that. Thank you for coming here. Thank you for coming to me.”

The words stuck in Luís’ throat. He glanced at Adrian, then wrenched his head around and made himself look the man full in the face. At the very least, Adrian deserved that.

Adrian stared up, skin so pale it was grey now instead of white. But his teeth were still white, whiter than the snow, and his lips were red against them. And his eyes were very dark and shining, and for some reason he was smiling at Luís. “I needed you. I—I didn’t want to live. I had nothing, I thought I couldn’t…but—but life is better, even when…it’s better to…live.”

“Adi,” Luís said. Then he worked his mouth, trying to get the man’s full name to pass his lips. But he couldn’t. He bowed his head, willing his throat to loosen.

But when he looked up, he saw that that wasn’t needed.

* * *

Luís heard them surround him, but he ignored the tramping boots and jingle of tack, concentrating on drawing out each word perfectly. It had been a long time since he’d spoken a Latin prayer loud enough for him to actually hear it, and at any rate he didn’t want his failing to be what spoiled it.

He finished it without interruption, then turned to see Turkish soldiers all aiming their weapons at him. Save for the horseman he took to be their officer, who sat upright with his hands lying easily on his thighs: that was sheer skill, for he had no underling holding his reins for him. He seemed to be tall, and was extremely fair, almost as fair as Adrian, and his narrowed eyes were flinty.

“You,” he said. “Was that a Catholic prayer?”

The man had asked in good, if accented, Latin. A vague stirring of surprise went through Luís. “Yes. I was saying it for my…my friends.”

He gestured at the ground and the man glanced there, then returned his gaze to Luís. “But they look like natives.”

“I know, but I’m a Catholic, and I don’t know their prayers. But they should have a word for them, and if God is God, then I think he’d understand no matter the language or the phrasing,” Luís said. The surprise was gone, and in its place was a curious lack of nerves. Part of it was grief, he recognized, but another part was simply that any suffering that lay ahead of him was not an unknown quantity now. And with the unknown went a type of fear that he couldn’t feel any more, since he _knew_. “I’m done now.”

“But they’re not buried,” the man said, frowning. “And there is no grave—no consecrated ground, is there?”

“They asked not to be. It’s their way—they want to be laid out and undisturbed.” Luís idly began to coil up his rosary.

The clicking of the beads seemed to alarm the soldiers, but they halted at a mere jerk of the horseman’s elbow. Then the horseman bent forward, eyes flicking from the rosary’s cross to Luís. “Are you a priest?”

“I…” Luís finally glanced at Adrian’s face, smooth and peaceful now. Then he looked back up. “I am. Though the Church in Rome no longer recognizes me. I’ve been excommunicated.”

“But you still…that is interesting.” The horseman sat back, contemplating, before abruptly waving one man forward. He whispered to him, then urged his horse forward a few steps, so it was standing directly before Luís, while around them the soldiers split off into purposeful-looking groups. “I am Zinedine Yazid Zidane. I am an emissary of the Egyptian sultan, and answer only to him. I am also interested in your Church, and would like to learn more, if you would care to be my guest. Your friends will not be disturbed. I give you my word.”

After another look at Adrian, Luís sighed and reached down. He stilled when a soldier whirled and shouted at him, then looked back at Zidane. “I can’t speak for my Church anymore, and I do carry a sword. But I am a priest. I live for my faith that this is a godly world, and that the purpose of man is to…is to do good, whenever he can, if he can. Sometimes the sword seems necessary. It’s not—I only need it to survive, but I have to survive if I’m to live. So I won’t leave it.”

Zidane gazed at him, face unreadable. Then he lifted his chin a little, throwing the high bridge of his nose in sharp relief against the white light reflected off the snow. “I have given my word that your friends will be respected, and that you will be a guest of mine. The Pasha has no sway over me or my men, and will not be able to reach you, even if you’ve borne arms against him. But can you swear on your honor that you will behave like a guest?”

“No. I don’t know what the state of my honor is, so I won’t swear on that,” Luís said. He glanced at the sword, absently noting how thick the blood crusts on it were. “But I can give you my word. I promise I’ll treat with you as I’m treated.”

“That will do,” Zidane said after a moment, almost musingly. He looked at Luís a little longer, then turned his horse and gave another order.

As a horse was led up to Luís, he took up Adrian’s sword and slung it over his back. Then he paused, and then he turned back and stopped the man taking away his horse. He pulled the packet out from his saddlebag, then slipped it under Adrian’s body. Then he mounted the proffered horse, and let himself taken after Zidane.

“What were you doing? Was that part of the ritual?” Zidane asked.

“No. It was—something I needed to send to somebody, in order to keep my word to someone else. But the one who’s to receive it is dead, so I’m sending it with someone more likely to meet them than me.” Luís shifted his shoulders, unused to the heavier weight of the broadsword. He gazed about them, noting the differences between the soldiers’ garb; he could see now that they belonged in two groups, one of Turks and one presumably of Zidane’s own men.

Then he began to grimace, but he thought again, and finally he did look, and notice, and think. He was like that, he could now admit to himself, and it didn’t make his grief any less acute, or any less worthy. Grief had no value, after all—it was comfort of a sort, till one could continue without it. And one could.

They were at the foot of the hill—all of them, Luís, Zidane and the soldiers—when a shout rose. Luís turned and looked up, and at the top where the bodies had been left, a large wolf stood. It was on the thin side, but its fur was glossy and had an odd brownish hue to it that made it almost doglike. Another one nosed up beside it, then spun away out of sight.

“They seem to have absolutely no fear in this country,” Zidane observed. Then he started to speak to his underling again.

Luís saw the bows being strung and shook his head, then threw out his arm so his hand bumped Zidane. The other man jerked away and some of those bows swung to point at Luís, but he only shook his head again. “No, no, leave them.”

“But your friends…their bodies…” Zidane frowned, shifting uneasily in the saddle.

“Leave them.” Luís looked at the wolf again, and it returned the gaze for a moment longer before fleeing as well. From far in the distance came a wolf-howl, and then Luís thought he heard an answering bark from the two above them. But it was a faint sound, fading quickly. It might have been the wind. “That’s what they wanted. No—no people bothering them. Leave them, and I’ll tell you whatever you want about the Roman Catholic Church.”

For a little longer Zidane stared at him, but the man didn’t allow his men to chase after the wolves. And in the end, he simply waved them back, and signaled for them to resume going back to their…their camp, Luís presumed.

“What sort of rite is that? Leaving your bodies for the wolves?” Zidane asked.

“I don’t know.” Then Luís had to smile, though he knew that only puzzled Zidane more. He shrugged, then rolled back his shoulders and tipped his head back to look at the sky. His eyes were hurting again, but he made no effort to prevent that pain from becoming tears. For he was still grieving, and no matter what he knew about the future, he also knew that that wouldn’t pass easily. “I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s better not to know certain things. What you see is enough, after all. It tells you what you need to know.”

It’ll pass, he saw in the sky. The earth and the heavens would move, and he would move with them, and one day—one day he would find himself in love again. That, he knew now. But that day was not now, and so he would weep today.

**Author's Note:**

> I take a few liberties with the circumstances surrounding the death of Vladislav III, “The Impaler,” as the actual historical sources themselves are very scanty. In addition, I refer to him as “Draculea” as that was how he signed his name on official documents of his reign. 
> 
> On Adrian referring to "Romania" as a single entity - although the modern country didn't come into existence until well after this story was dated, there is evidence that the local inhabitants considered themselves, at the very least, a distinct region and culture, starting with the time of the Roman Empire. It's muddled since the area got conquered and re-conquered and most sources are filtered through propagandist lenses of some sort or the other, but it fit the story so I went with it.
> 
> For more historical resources, see the Introduction.


End file.
